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-IBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



/Ify> Septuagint 



bv y 

Ct>arle£ force SDeemg 

Pastor of the Church of the Strangers 

and 

President of the American Institute of Christian Philosophy 



NEW YORK 

CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 

104 & 106 Fourth Avenue 



3*7 £TX 




**£» 
^ 



COPTRIGHT, 1892, BT 

CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY. 

All rights reserved. 



V 



THE MBB8HON COMPANY 
BAHWAY, N. J. 



FT1HE name of this book probably suggested 
itself to my mind because what it contains 
has been written since the LX$S, anniversary 
of my birthday. 

That is all. 



THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED TO THE 

MEMORY OF THE 

LXX 

MEN 

ALL DEPARTED THIS LIFE 
PERSONAL CONTACT WITH WHOM NOW 
SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN MOST INFLUENTIAL 
FOR GOOD IN THE FORMATION OF MY CHAR- 
ACTER AND THE FURTHERANCE OF MY CAREER 



William Henry Allen 
James 0. Andrew- 
Spencer M. Baird 
William H. Battle 
Gregory T. Bedell 
Thomas E. Bond 
William C. Bryant 
Merritt Caldwell 
George G. Cookman 
Melville B. Cox 
David Creamer 
Howard Crosby 
George David Cummins 
Daniel Curry 
Jacob Day 
George W. Deems 
Theodore Disosway Deems 
Israel D. Disosway 
Gabriel P. Disosway 
William E. Dodge 
George Duffield 
Divie Bethune Duffield 
David Duncan 
John P. Durbin 
John Early 
John E. Edwards 
John Emory 
Robert Emory 
Isaac Errett 
Clinton B. Fisk 
Manning Force 
John B. Gough 
Henry W. Grady 
James Lorimer Graham 
William Mercer Green 



Francis Hall 
Samuel Smith Harris 
Francis L. Hawks 
Roswell D. Hitchcock 
Edmund S. Janes 
Turner M. Jones 
Christian Keener 
Thomas G. Low 
Benjamin N. Martin 
John McClintoek 
Holland N. McTyeire 
Alexander Means 
Elisha Mitchell 
Robert S. Moran 
Belden Noble 
Van Bensalaer Osborn 
Robert Paine 
George Peck 
George F. Peirce 
James Phillips 
Noah Porter 
David M. Reese 
E. Yates Reese 
Thomas B. Sargent 
The Earl of Shaftesbury 
Henry B. Smith 
Charles H. Spurgeou 
Arthur Peurhyn Stauly 
John Summerheld 
David L. Swain 
Cornelius Yanderbilt 
William H. Yanderbilt 
Beverly Waugh 
Ransom B. Welch 
Alexander Winchell 



CONTENTS. 



I. At Seventy-one, 

II. The Present Outlook of Theology, 

III. A Prayer, .... 

IV. Evolution and Morality, 

V. Heredity and Christian Doctrine, 

VI. Mr. Markham's Dream, 

VII. The Ascended Christ, 

VIII. "The Light is at the End." A Hymn 

IX. George Washington, 

X. Howard Crosby. A Poem, 

XI. Giving Thanks, 

XII. Years, 

XIII. Assumptions, .... 

XIV. Mrs. Hay and Mrs. Jones, 

XV. ''Whence." A TJianksgiving Hymn, 

XVI. Crystals and Heretics, 

XVII. Misconceptions of Keligion, 

XVIII. Christmas and Civilization, . 

XIX. Discoursing on the Humanities, 

XX. "Decent," 

XXI. A Hard, Hard World, 

XXII. Christian Communism, . 

XXIII. In a Court House, . 

XXIV. Address of Welcome to Y. P. S. C. E., 
XXV. "The Banner of Jesus." A Hymn, 



PAGE. 
9 

20 

37 

38 

51 

72 

80 

101 

103 

125 

127 

133 

134 

143 

153 

155 

161 

164 

172 

176 

184 

188 

191 

194 

208 



AT SEVENTY-ONE. 

[Written fob my Friends, May 10, 1892.] 

I WAS a very small boy when a phrase in the 
ninetieth Psalm lodged itself in some cell of my 
brain, and from time to time rang through my 
head with a solemn cadence in its tone. That 
phrase was " the days of our years are three-score 
years and ten." The sound was solemn, but 
seemed to indicate nothing nearer than eternity. 
The ninetieth Psalm is part of the church service 
at the burial of the dead. When I became a 
clergyman its frequent repetition seemed to settle 
its whole solemnity on the concluding monosyllable, 
" ten." The " score " of years seemed to make but 
little impression upon me at first, but it was the 
word " ten ! " The " three-score " years over did 



10 MY SEPTUAOINT 



not alarm me ; but it was the " ten ! " When I 
had passed my two-score years still it was the " ten " 
that pealed in my imagination. It grew more and 
more solemn after I had passed half way down the 
decade which succeeded my third " score " of years ; 
it was still the knell of the " ten ! » 

One of the most relieving sensations of my life 
was when I had passed the " three-score years and 
ten," and I remember the buoyancy of feeling 
which came to me one December morning when I 
arose and stretched myself, and to myself did 
say most cheerfully, "I am seventy-one." The 
old and harrowing phrase has had no more power 
over me since that day ; with " three-score years 
and ten" I am done forever and ever. 

Then I commenced a new life, and so far as 
times, seasons and periods are concerned I have no 
feelings different from those which characterized 
my life thirty years ago. Before passing the limit 
marked by Moses in his mortuary Psalm I was 
accustomed to measure my life by decades, but 
since that period I have seemed to be able more 
wisely to " number my days." 

I have written the above in answer to the ques- 



MY SEPTUAQINT 11 

tion, "How does a man feel at three-score years 
and ten t n I look into my heart and make the 
following additional response : I am not conscious 
of having any of those several symptoms which 
have generally been supposed to indicate old age, 
except the one pointed out by Solomon, "They 
shall be afraid of that which is high." I cannot 
climb as I once could. Four flights of stairs tire 
me very much, and I am sensible of a secret wish 
that all my dear parishioners and friends might 
live on the first floor. Otherwise, as I write to- 
day, with the splendor of this beautiful morning 
streaming into my study and lighting up the life- 
size portrait of my dear wife, who, by the way, has 
borne with my manners in this wilderness nine 
years longer than the Lord endured Israel — I do 
not feel any lessening of the ability of my body to 
give me pleasure. Yesterday three meals were 
eaten with as keen an appetite as the meals I took 
at college even on foot-ball days. I did more in 
the week preceding than in any week of my middle 
life, and last night for seven hours slept a sleep as 
sweet as that of my childhood. I enjoy beautiful 
sights, landscapes, lovely women and children, 



12 MY SEPTUAOINT 

statuary and paintings, as much as I ever did in 
earlier life. Music is as pleasing to me; gayest 
dance-music as well as the high sound of chants in 
the pomp of the most solemn worship. I enjoy 
boys ; I love to see them at play ; and, when per- 
mitted to join them, I enter into the plans and 
purposes of young people with zest. I have no 
feeling of age, except perhaps by an occasional 
startling suggestion of declining additional work 
because the time before me may be so short ! On 
the contrary I generally find myself planning for 
new things which require many years ; and I have 
schooled myself into treating, as far as I can, the 
passage of time, as I suppose I shall probably 
treat the passage of eternity, if eternity has any 
passage. 

Twenty-five years ago, when providence seemed 
to indicate to me that I was to enter upon the 
career which has proved to be the pastorate of the 
"Church of the Strangers," I had an inward 
shrinking, and I said, " I am too old ; " but to-day, 
if I accepted a call to a pastorate of a " Church of 
the Strangers" in London, or to the head of an 
university, or to the presidency of a railway system, 



MY SEPTUAGINT 13 

I should enter upon the discharge of the duties 
thereof with a certain sense of alertness. When 
I call myself an " old fellow " my friends must 
understand that it is simply tipping my hat to 
Father Time and has no more solemnity in it than 
belongs to such a slight courtesy. I take delight 
in work. I would rather preach than eat, and I 
like to eat. Life is worth living. Marriage is 
not a failure. Death has no fright in it. Eternity 
is not more awful than time. These are my senti- 
ments to-day. 

I have been asked, "Would you wish to live 
your life over again ? " The answer to that ques- 
tion depends upon its meaning. If it mean to 
inquire whether I would be willing to commence 
life just as I did at birth, have each day with its 
joys and sorrows, with its gains and its losses, pre- 
ceding its successor, precisely as the days of my 
life up to this date have done, I should say un- 
hesitatingly " no." Why should I ? I have lived 
those days, and there would be nothing gained if I 
went precisely over the same steps. The next 
seventy-one years would be no better nor worse 
than the seventy-one years I have passed. But if 



14 MY SEPTUAGINT 

the question mean, would I like to begin another 
seventy-one years with the experience I already pos- 
sess, my answer is " I have begun it." I am on 
my second period of seventy-one years; whether 
they shall be passed in this life or in another is sim- 
ply tantamount to the question whether they shall 
be passed in America or in Europe. But if there 
be a third meaning to the question, " would I like 
now, in this last decade of the 19th century, to 
commence, with all my experience and knowledge 
in a body like my infant body, and run sixty years 
into the 20th century?" I rather think I should 
answer " yes." For three reasons : in the first 
place, as I began my life with no capital except 
my infant body and my spiritual possibilities, I 
should commence this new life with a comparative- 
ly great wealth of developed power ; and, secondly, 
I should have the play of those life powers in 
a century which, to my vision, promises to be more 
splendid than all its^ predecessors; and thirdly, 
I have no violent desires to go into another world. 
I find myself feeling in regard to that other world 
much as I supposed I should have felt in regard 
to this world, if I had felt at all, and I have no 



MY SEPTUAGINT 15 

recollection that I greatly desired to come into this 
human life on earth. If there be immortal exis- 
tence it matters not whether I enter upon it to-day 
or years or centuries hence. 

It gladdens me to reflect that my three-score 
years and ten have been spent in the most inter- 
esting and important century of human history. 
Since I was born Christianity has made greater 
progress than in any period of ten times its length 
since Christ ascended. More copies of the Bible 
have been printed than in all the preceding years 
since the Reformation. Missions and missionaries 
have been multiplied at a rate much surpassing 
that of any other period in the history of Christen- 
dom, and I have witnessed an improvement in 
Christian theology and Christian charity and Chris- 
tian unity, which, if not keeping pace with Chris- 
tian activity, gives a promise brighter than that 
which ever shone on the latter days of any Chris- 
tian man who died before I was born. 

In all that makes life worth living and increases 
its power of multiplying itself, I have seen and 
enjoyed more than my predecessors. Science has 
widened knowledge and broadened humanity, the 



16 MY SEPTUAGINT 

applications of science have made cottages palaces 
and the man of the present to realize the fables 
regarding both Argus and Briareus, in having a 
hundred eyes and a hundred hands. The improve- 
ment in the telescope and microscope, and the in- 
vention of the spectroscope, have increased the 
range of vision. Steam and electricity have given 
the hundred hands in that they enable the man of 
to-day to work in a hundred places, whereas when 
I was born he could work only in one. Tear 
down all the telegraphs and telephones and steam 
presses, tear up all the railroads, blow up all the 
steamers, annihilate all the phonographs and sewing 
machines and typewriters, extinguish all the electric 
lights and pull down all the gas fixtures and gas 
factories, wipe out almost everything west of the 
Alleghanies, and reduce the cities east thereof to 
villages, the largest cities not exceeding 100,000 
inhabitants, and you would reduce our country and 
our life to what they were when I began my three- 
score years and ten. 

I find myself, I do believe, this day more willing 
to live and more willing to die, than I ever did in 
any day before, I find myself concerned less with 



MY SEPTUAGINT 17 

the past and less with the future than I ever was 
before. I have the abiding conviction that the 
best of all things is for me to live this day without 
stop, without haste, with all my power of doing 
and of enjoying the things which God has given 
me. I have no intention ever to retire. Often, 
very, very weary, I think that if a syndicate were 
to offer me ten millions of dollars, to take care of 
me the rest of my life, provided I would promise 
never again to speak in public, never to write an- 
other line for the press, never again to make an 
engagement, never again to take an appointment, 
and to resign now all the offices I hold in church, 
in school and in society, I would refuse the ten 
millions, although I may not have ten months or 
even ten days to live. I have abundant pastorate 
cares, great number of calls, a correspondence which, 
together with two secretaries, I cannot so meet as 
to close any day with no unanswered letter, and I 
have natural parental care for my girls who are 
married, for my boys who are in business, my com- 
pany of children and children-in-law, and my little 
host of grand-children, and I am not pecuniarily 
rich, so as to be free from studying how to live 



18 MY SEPTTJAGINT 

properly in my position with my income. Perhaps 
I know as many people in New York as almost 
any other person, but to-day I do not know any 
happier man. My loves are sweeter than my ear- 
liest sweetheart loves. My friends seem more and 
nobler than they ever have before. I sit in my 
study and talk to my heart, and dictate these lines, 
and feel that I am approaching the experience of 
the Apostle Paul "For to me to live is Christ, and 
to die is gain." 

To my increasing passionate love for the person- 
ality of Jesus Christ I attribute all that is sweet 
and good in the present condition of my life. In- 
creasingly He seems to become the rarest, finest 
gentleman I have ever known; the noblest, truest, 
most satisfying friend I have ever had; and 
so grand a conqueror of all worlds that I am 
ready to stay with Him in auy world or go 
with Him to any world. "I know Whom I 
have believed." Being assured of the immortality 
of my spirit because of my spiritual alliance 
with Him, I have ceased to pray to be delivered 
from sudden death, which may be a blessing. 
Leaving it all to Him I am able to address this 



MY SEPTUAGINT 19 

mortal soul-life in the words of the good and 
gifted Mrs. Barbauld: 

Life ! we've long been together 

Through pleasant and through cloudy weather. 

'Tis hard to part when friends are dear : 

Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear ; 

Then steal away, give little warning, 

Choose thine own time ; 

Say not " Good Night " — but in some brighter clime — 

Bid me " Good Morning ! " 



II. 

THE PEESENT OUTLOOK OF 
THEOLOGY. 

Theology is a human science, just as astronomy 
is. The latter consists of the facts of the stellar 
universe as observed by man and classified by hu- 
man skill, together with a generalization which 
formulates the laws of those facts. The same is 
true of geology, chemistry, or any other science, 
according to its objects. Theology is the formula- 
tion by the human intellect of all that it can learn 
of the facts of God. If there be a God who is the 
First Cause, He must be the Creator of all things 
in heaven and in earth. The field of theology, 
therefore, is boundless. Whoever makes any con- 
tribution to any science in any department must 
thereby make a contribution to theology. It fol- 
lows that theology must be a progressive science. 



MY SEPTTJAGINT 21 

It can never be considered as finished any more 
than astronomy, which is a progressive science. 
Theology must be more progressive than astronomy, 
its boundaries being enlarged in some measure by 
the enlargement of the boundaries of any of the 
other sciences. 

That which distinguishes theology from every 
other science is this : that it is impossible to make 
the slightest advance in any department of any 
science without making a contribution to theology. 
That gives theology its great dignity and makes it 
the scientia scientiarum. The facts of the universe 
do not change, but men's knowledge of them does. 
Facts may exist without a man's knowing them, but 
his science depends upon his knowledge of the facts 
as things done or made. The facts of God are 
something which God has done or made. If God 
is not the author of the Bible, then the Bible can 
make no contributions to theology. The absolute 
facts of God are all that we have as materials for 
the construction of theology. 

Was the physical universe created, or is matter 
eternal? This is a question of abstract thought. 
The very moment we come to the consideration of 



22 MY SEPTUAGINT 

the possible hypothesis of a Creator we enter on the 
beginnings of theology. We pursue a theological 
investigation when we ask the question. Is the 
authorship of the Bible in God or in man? If it 
be settled that the Bible is of human authorship, 
like Dante's "Inferno" and Milton's "Paradise 
Lost/' it ceases to be of any more importance in 
theological study than either of those books. A 
thinker who believes that God is the original Crea- 
tor of that which is developed into all things will 
be interested in the Bible as he would be in a loco- 
motive as being a product of a product of God. If 
he belongs to a certain school of thinkers, the inter- 
est in the poem or locomotive will be still further 
removed from God, because in that case it will be 
a product of a product of a product of God — God 
being considered the Creator of simply the first of 
everything, from which has sprung everything else, 
including humanity with all its generations. 

As materials for theology there is a difference in 
the values of nature and the Bible. The facts of 
the former have to be gathered through long cycles 
of observation, while in the Bible they lie patent in 
print before the eye. If the Bible be the work of 



MY SEPTUAGINT 23 

God, God therein does for man what man could 
not do for himself nor of himself, even with the aid 
of nature, through any period or by any kind or 
amount of study. Like a telescope, it brings to 
sight the truths too far off for the naked eye of the 
mind, besides doing in the department of natural 
theology what it would require cycles upon cycles 
of scientific study to discover from any natural 
facts. The destruction of the Divine authorship of 
the Bible, therefore, would throw down a very 
large portion of the structure of theology. This is 
so apparent that all men who think on the subject 
see how profound an interest there is in the question, 
Is God in any sense the Author of the Bible or any 
portion thereof? If "Yes," in what sense and of 
what portions? We thus perceive that there is a 
double outlook to biblical theology; first, as to 
the extent of authority of the Bible; and, sec- 
ondly, as to its significance. So the destruction of 
the Divine authorship of nature would throw 
down a large portion of the structure of theology. 
If Divine authorship be denied to both nature 
and the Bible, then theology is eliminated from 
human studies. 



24 MY SEPTUAOINT 

Theologic researches naturally divide themselves 
into (1) examinations of the vehicles of God's self- 
revelation, and (2) studies in the contents of those 
media of communication. The former is ordinarily 
called science, and the latter criticism. 

In regard to the older Bible, Nature, students 
now seem more and more to consider it not as a 
thing existing by itself— of which it affords no evi- 
dence — but as something produced by one for an- 
other as a book is produced by an author for a 
reader, of which it aifords abundant evidence, grow- 
ing larger and clearer as more and better study is 
given it. Now that very characteristic of its nature 
gives form and coloring to the theology which 
comes of study of the physical universe. If the 
universe be regarded as self-existing, then men 
might hold to evolution, which is distinctly non- 
theistic, if not atheistic, not requiring a god for the 
reason that it is founded on the assumption that 
the possibility and potency and promise of all things 
reside in matter as matter. This has always proved 
unsatisfactory from a highly scientific point of view, 
because as a hypothesis it necessarily leaves so many 
facts unprovided for; but so soon as the physical 



MY SEPTUAGINT 25 

universe is taken as a book, then every single fact 
discovered up to date and heretofore used to support 
evolution is accounted for, with the addition of the 
advantage of accounting for all those other facts 
scientifically discovered, which not only have hith- 
erto failed to support evolution, but seem even to 
such minds as Mr. Darwin's to stand directly con- 
trary to it. In this department, therefore, Ave 
perceive a growing disposition to accept the devel- 
opment theory, which accounts for all the processes 
in nature, not as coming out, but as brought out; 
not as the product of the automatic action of soul- 
less matter, but as first put into matter by a Creator 
and then drawn out under His instant and constant 
support and supervision. The effect of this move- 
ment in natural theology is good every way. It 
not only leaves science free, but stimulates scientific 
research. It gives consistency to all intellectual 
effort in this department, and is a clew to a laby- 
rinth which we should otherwise have to explore 
by groping. It gives vividness, lifeness, so to 
speak, to human study. The student is not alone 
with the Book. It is as if Plato should enter the 
room and assist the student who is striving to make 



26 MY SEPTTJAGINT 

out the meaning of some intricate passages of the 
"Phgedo" or the "Gorgias." The belief in the 
Creator-God is increased by the feeling which every 
truly scientific mind perceives as pressing upon it — 
namely, that if there were no God we should be 
compelled; in the interest of science, to invent one. 
I think the outlook on this side is very hopeful. 

Now when we turn to the newer Bible, con- 
tained in what is commonly known as the canon- 
ical books of the Old and New Testament, we are 
in the department of criticism. The outlook here 
shows a resolute determination upon the part of 
many astute and strong thinkers to submit the book 
to precisely the same kind of examination as that 
to which are submitted all the books now coming 
fresh from the press, books that acknowledge author- 
ship in all departments of literature. It is as if 
one examined the Ark of the Covenant, not look- 
ing on it with eyes of reverence, but handling it, 
taking it apart, putting the knife into it, ascertain- 
ing what is the fibre and grain of the wood, meas- 
uring it with tape and yard-stick, and weighing it 
on scales and submitting it to examination to ascer- 
tain whether the sides, the bottom, and the top are 



MY SEPTUAGINT 27 

composed each of one piece or more. To those who 
worship God in the " Ark," this would seem to be 
an intolerable operation. If a man had devised it 
for the residence of his dignity he might resent such 
a procedure; but perhaps God does not. The 
patient God, who makes an Ark not for the Ark's 
sake, but to be a residence of His mercy, not for 
that mercy's sake, but for the sake of men, may be 
quite willing that that repository shall have the 
most thorough secular examination if it result in 
making men more and more believe and trust the 
Divine mercy therein enshrined. 

It seems to me that there need be no distress in 
any mind in regard to this procedure. When 
Jehovah moved before Israel in that which was a 
pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, a de- 
vout Israelite need not have been disturbed if some 
scientist felt disposed to enter upon an examination 
of that pillar to ascertain whether its substance was 
fume or vapor, so long as it retained visible shape 
sufficient to be a guide, so long as it illuminated 
the camp by night, so long as its motions could 
guide to the times and place for the pitching and 
breaking of the camp, so long it would discharge 



28 MY SEPTUAOINT 

the functions necessary for God's guidance of His 
people ; and that is all God intended it for. It is 
easy to perceive that the cloud in the desert was 
not necessary to the existence of Jehovah's power 
and glory, but that it was necessary for the people 
who beheld it. It is very manifest that the Ark 
of the Covenant was not necessary to the existence 
of God's mercy, but that it was helpful to the 
people who saw it as a reminder of the mercy of 
their God. 

So we need not worry because men are treating 
the Bible as they would any other piece of litera- 
ture. Either God is in the Bible or He is not. 
No man is any more interested than any other man 
in proving or disproving the Divine residence. If 
God be there all criticism will fail to eject Him ; 
and if He be not there no one has any more 
interest in making Him present in the book 
" Genesis " or the book " Isaiah " than in Motley's 
"History of the United Netherlands" or in 
Goethe's " Faust." Guesses, hypotheses, or theo- 
ries of Pentateuch or Hexateuch, Elohism or Jeho- 
ism, one Isaiah or ten, ante-exilic or post-exilic 
date, cannot affect the influence over the human 



MY SEPTUAGINT 29 

heart of any book whose content is felt to be of 
Divine authorship. In physical science the hy- 
pothesis cannot change the facts. Whether the 
corpuscular or vibratory theory of light be main- 
tained light is all the same. Theories of inspiration 
may vary ; but if there be a God-power in a book, 
or in a cloud, or in an ark, men will feel it. Theo- 
ries of inspiration have varied from that of the 
Divine dictation of every single word in the written 
law and Gospel to that of merely generally good 
influence over intellects not preserved from all 
errancy. This may simply be a question of mode 
of Divine authorship among men who agree as to 
the fact of Divine authorship. 

One of the latest indications of movement on this 
subject has been made by the reception of the new 
book, " Lux Mundi." A very short time ago 
there ivas a convention of members of the Estab- 
lished Church of England, in which was brought 
forward a resolution to condemn the teaching of 
this book on the subject of inspiration. That reso- 
lution was overwhelmingly defeated. This does 
not show any endorsement of the doctrines of that 
book, but it does show that the general mind of 



30 MY SEPTUAGINT 

the Church of England is in such a state as can 
allow its members to set forth any possible doc- 
trines on inspiration, while yet holding the -Bible 
as, in some really strong sense, the Word of God. 
The scholars in the Wesleyan body in England 
have perhaps brought theology to a more reason- 
able form, to a more judicious union of what are 
called Arminianism and Calvinism, and to greater 
consistency with the Bible, than any other body of 
Christian thinkers. One significant occurrence 
among them is now reported. Kecently in the city 
of London there was a large meeting of Wesleyan 
ministers, at which Professor Davison read a paper 
endorsing " Lux Mundi," with its views of the 
Pentateuch, the two Isaiahs, the uncertain date of 
authorship of Daniel, and a denial of verbal inspir- 
ation. He congratulated the Wesleyan ministers 
that their creed contained no article defining in- 
spiration, and that they put their religion on faith 
in Christ, and not on faith in a book. A motion 
was made to publish the professor's address. An 
amendment to print it only for the ministers was 
overwhelmingly defeated. 

These two recent events indicate the general out- 



MY SEPTUAGINT 31 

look of theology as to the book- vehicle of God's 
facts from which we are to make theology. 

The phrase " make theology " is used intention- 
ally. Theology is a human fact made from Divine 
facts. As the old facts of nature make new physi- 
cal science, as the old facts of mind are used to 
make new mental philosophy, so improved views 
of the old facts of the Bible will be used to make 
new theologies, and we have a right to hope better 
theologies. A man or a body of men in the nine- 
teenth century must be better prepared to formu- 
late a theology than a man or a body a men of the 
same ability and piety in the sixteenth century, 
because the former have all that the latter had, 
with the advantages of the learning gained in three 
centuries, in which there has been more quickened 
thought and more really vital and active piety 
than in any ten preceding centuries. No man in any 
century can make any new God-fact; but, as the 
centuries go forward, out of the same old fact or 
Word of God, as Robinson said in the cabin of the 
Mayflower, more and more light will come forth, 
and that increasing light will come because men's 
vision will be enlarged to receive more light. 



32 MY SEPTUAGINT 

In the mean time let us be quite patient with 
one another. We shall obstruct the progress of 
truth if we do not draw the distinction there clearly 
as between the denial of a certain theory of inspira- 
tion and the denial of inspiration itself. If two 
Christian scholars announce their belief in the 
inspiration of the Pentateuch, one holding that 
Moses was the amanuensis of the Holy Spirit, 
another that each of the books was anonymous, we 
need not denounce the two scholars as heretics 
because we agree with a third, seeing that all of 
them agree with us that the real author is God. 
It .is as if the question arose as to which of a 
number of secretaries employed by any man may 
have addressed us a particular letter; that is of 
little consequence, so that we acknowledge that our 
friend himself is the real author of the letter. 
Even if there be here and there an omitted word, 
a little break in a sentence, or a little obscurity in 
a phrase, the content assures us of the authorship. 
Because it concerns that which is known only to 
our correspondent and ourselves, we are sure that 
he must be the real, ultimate author of the letter. 
We need not be concerned about the fallibility of 



MY SEPTUAGINT 33 

those whom we have reason to believe to be God's 
secretaries so long as we hold to the infallibility of 
God. Christ said, " The words that I have spoken 
to you, they are spirit and they are life ; " we gain 
nothing by changing that into "they are letters 
and syllables." A word may be spelled differently 
at different times, and yet always be intelligible 
and always mean the same thing. The author of 
the Bible is the author of nature, and yet in nature 
we perceive breaks, imperfections, and apparently 
irreconcilable discrepancies. The farther and far- 
ther we press our scientific studies the more these 
both appear and disappear, and yet they do not at 
all shake our faith in the creatorship of God. So 
may it be with the authorship of the Bible. 

The outlook now seems to be that the Bible is 
to be set free from many a theory of inspiration 
which has hampered it, and to be put in such a 
position that it may exercise over men the power 
of a really God-inspired book. As we advance 
in culture, that power, which has been greatly 
hindered by certain post-Reformation dogmatic 
scholasticisms, will break forth, and the Bible 
— God's Word — will ride on in splendor and 



34 MY SEPTUAGINT 

scatter the mists which human weakness has made 
around it, as the rising sun dissipates the vapor 
which its rays encounter on the eastern horizon. 
In this department the outlook of theology is most 
favorable. 

There is little space to speak of the state of 
doctrinal theology. The " denominations " are 
coming together more and more. The discussion 
of doctrines seems to be producing a fusing process. 
The word " denomination " points to a name-. It 
means that in which one school of Christian the- 
ology differs from any other school of Christian 
theology, without any reference whatever to that 
in which all schools of Christian theology agree. 
I think I have heard this called " provincialism." 
Augustinianism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, Wesley- 
anism are provincial names; so are the words 
Episcopalianism, Presbyterianism, Methodism, Bap- 
tistism, Romanism. Christians in all these sec- 
tions would admit that there are Christians in all 
other sections. Each is a species of the genus 
Christian. Genus is extensive, species is intensive ; 
and in this, as in all other departments of classifi- 
cation, the genus is more important. In a logical 



MY SEPTUAGINT 35 

definition of a thing the genus is first given as 
indispensable in the thing which is about to be 
defined ; to complete the definition you add the 
differentia to the genus. The differentia simply 
distinguishes the thing defined from other things 
which belong to the very same genus. For a long 
time men's attention was riveted to the differences 
of the schools. Now Christians are coming to con- 
sider the things wherein they agree. The kingdom 
of God begins to appear, as in point of fact it really 
is, very much greater than any of its provinces, 
little or large. In the great Republic of United 
Theologies it would seem that zeal for State's 
Rights is being absorbed into enthusiasm for 
Nationalism. 

Moreover, there seems to be a tendency to change 
the point of view of the Bible's teaching of the 
doctrines of redemption. Heretofore theologies 
seem to have started with the sovereignty of God. 
Everything was studied in reference to the throne 
of the King. Now studies are more given to the 
salvation of man as a standing-point. There is no 
tearing up of the track, for the Bible is still here. 
There is no change of the locomotive, for human 



36 MY SEPTUAGINT 

reason is still here. But instead of starting from 
the station at the head of the valley and going 
down, theologians make their trains start out of 
the station at the foot of the valley. Evidently 
this does not change a single thing in the land- 
scape, while it does give a new theology, but only 
in the sense of a new view of the same facts of 
God. 

On the whole the outlook of theology seems 
hopeful. The agitation which is frightening many 
people is a movement toward settling things in a 
very much better relative position on the old foun- 
dations. The Bible, as the infallible God's revela- 
tion of the infallible rule of faith and practice, is 
dearer and more potential than ever before. The 
twentieth century is approaching our grand world 
with the sword of the spirit in its brave, uplifted, 
waving right hand, with the smile of faith upon 
his lips, the glowing crown of hope upon its 
brow, and a suffusion of heaven's love for earth 
overspreading its countenance. Men are coming 
to see that all the theology possible to man cannot 
make any man better, just as life cannot be pro- 
duced by the best science, but that life may produce 



MY SEPTUAGINT 37 

the best science, and that there is a religion which 
is love of God and love of man ; the love that loves 
man for God's sake; and that in the sight of God 
and man one grain of such religion outweighs a 
hundred tons of theology. 



III. 
A PRAYEK. 

O nail it to thy cross 

My wretched carnal pride 
Which glories in its rags and dross 

And knows no wealth beside : 
There let it surely die ; 

But let my spirit be 
Lifted, to sit with Thee on high 

And sweet humility. 



IY. 

EVOLUTION AND MOEALITY. 

In 1887 there was published in London an 
essay which bore the title, "Herbert Spencer's 
Theory of Religion and Morality." It has been 
republished in this country under the title of "The 
Moral and Religious Aspects of Herbert Spencer's 
Philosophy." From the essay we make the follow- 
ing extract as setting forth a friendly and an accu- 
rate statement of Mr. Spencer's theory of morality. 
It is to be remarked that Mr. Spencer has com- 
pleted only one of his projected works on ethics, 
namely, the " Data of Ethics." 

" Conduct is good when it conforms to the requirements of 
life ; to the extent that it fails of accomplishing this end it is 
bad. But here it must be carefully borne in mind that, by 
reason of the entanglement of human actions, every act must 
be considered with reference to its effect upon the actor him- 
self, upon his offspring, and upon society at large. Acts which 



MY SEPTUAOINT 39 

are good so far as the individual is concerned, may be bad 
when regarded from the standpoint of his offspring, or of 
society at large. Hence, in a social state, an act is moral only 
when it tends simultaneously to satisfy the needs of the actor 
himself, or of his offspring, and of society at large. In their 
summed-up effects, good acts are productive of more pleasure 
than pain ; and e converso, bad acts produce more pain than 
pleasure. Perfect goodness cannot give rise to any pain at all ; 
where pain figures as a direct result of an act, that act is pro 
lanto wrong. No course of action is absolutely right which 
causes even a modicum of pain. Perfect goodness (that is, 
conduct which is absolutely right) and the greatest happiness 
are terms expressive of the same idea from different points of 
view. Perfect goodness means conduct that completely satis- 
fies the separate and combined requirements of individual and 
social well-being : the greatest happiness describes the effect 
produced by this ideal fitness of things. To secure the great- 
est possible quantum of happiness is the great desideratum of 
life; but, since perfect goodness is the sine qua non of the 
greatest happiness, a perfectly moral life is the only means by 
which this desirable end can be attained. And this is true, 
despite the variable character of different standards of happi- 
ness, because the general conditions to the achievement of 
happiness are always the same, no matter how much the 
special conditions may vary. Hence, while the greatest hap- 
piness is the ultimate end of life, it must not be made the 
direct object of pursuit. Our immediate aim must be to live 
at peace with our fellow-beings ; to deal justly with them all 
in our transactions ; and, finally, to render them active assist- 
ance in their efforts to gratify the lawful desires of life." 

If this Spencerian theory were true, let us see 
Avhat would follow. If to make my conduct good, 



40 MY SEPTUAQINT 

I must conform to the requirements of life, then I 
must have a sufficiently wide outlook of life and a 
sufficient sagacity to perceive its requirements, in 
order to make my life virtuous. But where is the 
man amongst the most cultivated of men who is able 
to do this thing? Especially as by reason of the 
entanglement of human actions those who hold this 
theory perceive that every act must be considered 
with reference to its effect upon the actor himself, 
upon his offspring, and upon society at large. . If 
this be the case, then it is impossible for all the in- 
tellect in all the world to formulate even a very 
simple system of ethics: and, if the evolution 
theory be right, the demand which the Spencerian 
theory of morals makes is correct. Each man must 
know whether any act tends to satisfy all the needs 
of all the world, or else he cannot tell whether it 
be good or bad. It may be true that under some 
happy effects good acts are productive of more 
pleasure than pain, but where is the intellect 
amongst men who can sum up the effects of any 
single action of any single man ? It may be true 
that bad acts produce more pain than pleasure in 
the long run. They certainly do not always in 



MY SEPTUAGINT 41 

this present life. The pleasures of sin make the 
power of sin over human life. It would be diffi- 
cult to decide the question whether in this mortal 
life those who commit sin have more pain than 
pleasure. How, then, are we to know of any act 
that it is a good or a bad act on this theoiy? 

It might or might not be true that perfect good- 
ness cannot give rise to any pain at all, but it cer- 
tainly does not derive any probability from known 
facts in human life. Perhaps we have no case of 
perfect goodness amongst men. If we have, no 
one yet has discovered it, or if any one has discov- 
ered it, he has not yet exhibited it. We do know 
that the "goodness" with which we are acquainted 
may give much pain. We know that much of the 
pain that exists in the world is the product of good- 
ness, that in many a life if there were none of the 
sacrifices of goodness, if the subject Avere brutally 
bad or obstinately hard, there would be no pain. 
The suffering of the innocent for the guilty is world- 
wide and a world-known thing. The goodness of 
heroism and the goodness of self-abnegation have 
brought pain from the days of the first-born man 
down to this day, wherein a brilliant woman lias 



42 MY SEPTUAQINT 

given up mating with a noble man to pursue a 
magnificent career in human life, and has made 
this sacrifice that she may remain to discharge the 
oifices of love which she believes have been bound 
upon her by a duty which excludes her from the 
offered career. 

It was said above that we have had no example 
of perfect goodness in the world. The Christian 
reader may object to that, and say we have one 
man who has existed and in whom no fault 
could be found — Jesus of Nazareth. Well, if 
that be granted, His case overthrows the funda- 
mental doctrine of the Spencerian theory, for He 
was "a man of sorrows and acquainted with 
grief," and He died under the torture of ex- 
quisite pain. Every sorrow of that man's life, 
every grief of that man's heart, every agony 
of that man's body, was brought on Him by 
His goodness. If He had been merely as 
non-principled, we will not say unprincipled, as 
an ordinary man of the world, He might easily 
have avoided both His Gethsemane and His 
Golgotha. 

Another question arises. Is it trne that to 



MY SEPTUAGINT 43 

secure the greatest possible quantum of happiness 
is the greatest desideratum of life? We should 
need to agree upon the word happiness. If happi- 
ness means freedom from pain, physical comfort, 
and the sense of the enjoyment of our environ- 
ment, then the proposition could be readily denied. 
It is far from being the great desideratum of life. 
There may be something very much more desir- 
able than all these, and in point of fact, for that 
something else all these things have been resigned 
by all the greatest and all the best men produced 
by the human race. 

It is a little curious to be told that while the 
greatest happiness is the ultimate end of life, it 
must " not be made the direct object of pursuit." 
Why not ? Then we are told what must be our 
immediate aim, namely, to live at peace with 
our fellow beings, to deal justly with them in 
all our transactions, and finally, to render them 
assistance in their efforts to gratify the lawful 
desires of life. 

It would be interesting to be informed how I 
am to live at peace with my fellow beings ; how I 
am to deal justly with them ; and what are the 



44 MY SEPTUAGINT 

lawful desires of their life. These are the very 
points in question ; a large portion of the science 
of ethics lies here. 

If I am to know all the possible effects of any 
act of mine to determine whether it be lawful, I 
must have the same knowledge to determine 
whether the act or desire of my fellow man be 
lawful. Where am I to find all this ? How am 
I to find all this? How is the man who rises up 
early and lies down late and sweats all day. to 
make his bread, to know all these things? It is 
supposed that the evolution theory would teach us 
that as society progresses by a very large number 
of examinations of a very large number of cases, 
conducted by many generations, we should, by and 
by, in the lapse of cycles, come to learn the 
general tendency of particular acts, and so by the 
imprimatur of human society to declare some acts 
right and others wrong. But man has been too 
short a time on earth to have had opportunity for 
a safe conclusion. 

And that pushes the difficulty only a little further 
back. How did this sense of " right " and " wrong " 
first come into the world? How did those quad- 



MY SEPTUAGINT 45 

rupedal ancestors of ours, who swung themselves by 
their long tails in the original arboreal academies, 
get the idea that there could be such a thing as 
"rightness" and its opposite "wrongness" among 
men? It must have had a beginning. It it pos- 
sible to imagine any beginning of that distinction 
which has in itself formed the superbest thought 
that is entertained by the most cultivated intellects 
in this advanced period of humanity? How did 
it first come? 

If Mr. Spencer carries forward his work, we 
shall be interested to see what he does in the de- 
partment of the Sanctions of ethics. There may be 
some Data of ethics among the phenomena of hu- 
man existence; there may be enough of them to 
make something of a system ; but suppose the most 
perfect system could be formulated, the question 
readily arises, Why should I do such and such a 
thing. Suppose the answer be because it is right, 
I might then reply? Why should I do right f 
The response is, Because it conforms to the require- 
ments of life. But who knows what are the re- 
quirements of life? And what right has life to 
make any requirements of me? Suppose I should 



46 MY SEPTUAGINT 

not choose to conform to the requirements of life, 
even when known, what then? Why should I be 
called bad, as the Spencerian theory does call me ? 
I am told that in the long run it would give me 
more pleasure than pain to conform to what other 
people, or even I myself, regard as the require- 
ments of life. Suppose, then, I take the ground 
that I do not want the pleasure of "the long run/' 
that, for the pleasure which I can have in a certain 
course for five years, I prefer to be a consumptive 
or rheumatic for fifteen years, who has a right to 
say I am "bad" or "good" for that? Suppose I 
am taught that a virtuous act is one that promotes 
the greatest good of the greatest number, who shall 
denounce me if I say I do not care for the greatest 
good of the greatest number? In the first place, I 
do not know that it is good; in the next place I 
would rather they would not have so much pleas- 
ure; and, what claim have the greatest number 
upon me? 

The greatest number I believe whom I can affect 
will live on this planet after I am dead. It is not 
a mere joke, but it is a serious philosophical ques- 
tion, — What has posterity ever done for me that 1 



MY SEPTUAGINT 47 

should warp my life away from my preference, for 
posterity? 

Why should a man do right f That is a serious 
question. It is that question which makes it im- 
perative that I find out the sanction which is behind 
the data. In the most serious and candid thought 
has not this question arisen in every fair mind? 
Could men possibly find out what is right unless it 
be revealed to them by an infinite mind? Would 
an infinite mind reveal to mankind what is right 
and what is wrong unless that infinite mind had an 
interest in men avoiding wrong and doing right? 
If He have such interest, is it not natural to sup- 
pose that He will protect His interests, provided 
He can do so? Does not the admission of the ex- 
istence of the ethical quality in human actions 
necessitate the existence of a Being capable of know- 
ing all the possibilities of the infinite and capable of 
protecting His own moral interests? And does not 
this involve the antecedent probability of a revela- 
tion from Himself to humanity? Several things 
seem to follow : 

Evolution, being atheistic (mark, not antithe- 
istic), having no use for a God, believing that 



48 MY SEPTUAGINT 

matter as matter has in itself the promise and 
potency of all existence, and that nothing in which 
matter itself has not put forth automatically and 
without aid or superintendence, that the universe 
is a system of mattei by matter for matter, may 
perceive some things that look like data of ethics, 
but must not ask itself to be received until it 
establish some sanction of ethics. The develop- 
ment theory does not carry that load. It accepts 
everything that science has established in regard 
to the development of the universe. It accepts 
everything already scientifically established which 
evolution accepts, but it teaches that all this 
progress has been made on what was originally 
created for development by an infinite Being and 
has been brought along the line of development by 
the constant supervision and exertion of the 
original Creator. 

The development theory, therefore, is more 
scientific than the evolution, because it accounts 
more scientifically to the human mind for the 
greater number of phenomena. It does not leave 
the mind to grope its way through millions of 
years striving to find out whether any action be 



MY SEPTUAGINT 49 

right or wrong, and whether right be better than 
wrong, or wrong better than right, but it permits 
the possibility of supposing that the infinite mind 
might communicate its will in regard to the nature 
of human action in the very earliest stages of 
human existence. 

The fact seems to be that the fundamental 
ethical idea of the difference between right and 
wrong, " ought " and " ought not " is no natural 
or scientific portion of evolution whatever, but is 
taken bodily from the other theory and foisted on 
to evolution, which does not afford a hasp suffi- 
ciently strong to hold so long and heavy a chain. 

If there be a God, probably He knows what is 
right and what is wrong, and possibly He knows 
the "why" of the difference. No one else can. 
If He fail to make the communication to the 
human mind, then humanity is free from respon- 
sibility. Our knowledge of this whole subject 
must depend upon some such revelation. What 
God teaches man to be wrong is wrong, and 
what God teaches man to be right must be right. 
If there be any other kind of act, it is indifferent. 
Every act that has an ethical quality involves 



50 MY SEPTUAGINT 

responsibility. Responsibility means the being 
obliged to answer to one who has a right to 
demand. If there be no one in the universe who 
has a right to demand of me why I do so and so, 
then, in the sense of any responsibility, it does not 
matter whether I do so and so. Of irresponsible 
beings if eannot be affirmed that any of their 
actions are either right or wrong. 

Evolution being simply on trial, it cannot be 
accepted in the department in which Mr. Spencer 
is writing until it establish the Sanction of Ethics. 



HEREDITY AND CHRISTIAN 
DOCTRINE. 

A few things are supposed now to be scientific- 
ally settled. No inorganic matter has progeny. 
Every organism breeds and every organism pro- 
duces after its kind. A vegetable does not produce 
an animal, nor an animal a vegetable. A vine 
does not produce thistles, nor an apple tree grapes. 
No monkey can be parent of a pig. It is possible 
by careful cross-breeding to produce a variety of 
pigeons, but the laws of species seem to be unchange- 
ably fixed. Mr. Etheridge, perhaps as well in- 
formed a scientist as is now living, having charge 
of the British Museum, which has the amplest col- 
lection in the world, asserts that there is no evidence 
in all that vast collection of any transmutation of 
species. Then, probably, there is no such evidence 
anywhere. 

51 



52 MY SEPTUAGINT 

The beneficence of this arrangement is apparent 
to any understanding. If there were no reign by 
law, no woman would know whether her coming 
child was to be a kitten, a puppy, or a human 
babe. 

Not only does every animal produce after its 
kind, but it also transmits its physical characteris- 
tics to its offspring. When we come into the circle 
of animals which are human by reason of having 
intellect and conscience and conscious personality, 
it has been found that the child usually inherits the 
physical, the intellectual and the moral traits of its 
parents. As these come from two persons, the char- 
acteristics of the one modify the characteristics of 
the other. And then there are certain things in 
the environment which also modify the physical, 
intellectual and moral traits inherited from the 
parent. As a rule a man is the sum total of the 
characteristics of all his ancestors, modified by en- 
vironment at every stage of transmission. 

There is what may be called Initial Heredity. 
At the moment of its begetting, a child's parents, 
one or both, may be in some physical, intellectual, 
moral or spiritual condition quite out of the line of 



MY SEPTUAGINT 53 

their ordinary character and of that of their ances- 
tors, and this may so affect the child as to be the 
beginning of a trait which may be transmitted. In 
studying any particular case, if there seem to come 
a phenomenon which contradicts the rule of trans- 
mission, it may be accounted for by this doctrine of 
Initial Heredity. The beginning was occult. The 
parents themselves may not have been conscious of 
it. No man can have taken observation of it ; but 
still each man must be conscious of the possibility 
of its occurrence ; and if it were supposed never to 
occur, then there would be a stream of transmission 
always of exactly the same breadth and depth and 
character, and this we know is not true in point of 
fact. 

There is also what has been called Reversional 
Heredity, as in cases where physical, intellectual 
and moral characteristics have leaped one genera- 
tion. An insane man may have a child of very 
good understanding, or a child of decided genius, 
while the grandchild, by that very son, may be in- 
sane. This "atavism/ 7 as it is called, is very far 
from being rare in human society. It is necessary 
not only to know who were a man's parents, but 



54 MY SEPTUAGINT 

also who were his grandparents and. their grand- 
parents. 

It follows that in the constitution of nature men 
suffer for the sin of their ancestors ; it may be of 
fathers or grandfathers, or of those very remote. 
The child comes into the world with the tendency 
of his family stream and the momentum acquired 
by its run through previous centuries. All this 
often gives a melancholy coloring to the varied 
forms of human society. It is pitiful to see little 
children born in the slums with an ancestry of guilt 
and filth and all downward tendency. It is hard 
for them. But, with tenderest regard for the indi- 
vidual case, what thoughtful person would have it 
otherwise? Would you, when you remember that 
if the law of transmission did not prevail, a man 
who cultivated himself would do so simply for him- 
self and for his immediate generation, with no abil- 
ity to send the blessedness down to future genera- 
tions? For we must remember that this power of 
transmission does not reside alone in characteristics 
which are evil, but that it is equally potent and 
more persistent in characteristics which are good 
and beneficent. 



MY SEPTUAGINT 55 

Erasmus Darwin, in his " Botanical Garden" 
(1781), wrote: "It is remarkable that all the dis- 
eases from drinking spirituous or fermented liquors 
are liable to become hereditary, even to the third 
generation, gradually increasing till the family be- 
comes extinct." Mark that phrase, "even to the 
third generation." 

One hundred years after (1886), Dr. Crothers, of 
Hartford, in a paper on " Inebriety and Heredity," 
wrote : "In these cases there seems to be in certain 
families a regular cycle of degenerative diseases. 
Thus in one generation great eccentricity, genius 
and a high order of emotional development. . . . 
In the next generation, inebriate, feeble-minded or 
idiot. In the third generation, paupers, criminals, 
tramps, epileptics, idiots, insane, consumptives and 
inebriates. In the fourth generation they die out or 
may swing back to great geniuses, pioneers and 
heroes, or leaders of extreme movements." 

The result of the observation of violent vicious- 
ness made by these scientific men is in accord with 
the first statement in the second commandment of 
the decalogue, in which Jehovah is represented as 
"visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children 



56 MY SEPTUAGINT 

unto the third and fourth [generation] of them that 
hate [Him] and showing mercy unto thousands [of 
generations] of them that love [Him] and keep 
[His] commandments." 

Outbreaking sin destroys a family in a few gen- 
erations, but good character nourished by continual 
intermixture of good blood never exhausts itself, 
but shows the probability of perpetuating itself 
through thousands of generations. Good is stronger 
than evil, says science; so say the Bible writers. 

If the law were suddenly reversed there could 
be no calculation whatever in the production of 
either brute animals or human animals as to their 
characteristics. Now we know that there is some- 
thing in blood. Now we inquire, even in regard 
to a horse, what kind of animal was its dam and 
what its sire. Now we have the stimulus of build- 
ing up families in nobility of character. But if 
this law were suspended all that would be at an 
end, and that which is the most important process 
in all nature, namely, the production of human 
children, would be left wholly to chance. 

It is interesting and important to inquire what 
relation scientific teachings, in regard to heredity, 



MY SEPTUAGINT 57 

have to the teachings of what Christians believe to 
be the revealed Word of God in regard to sin and 
salvation. The longer men pursue science and the 
more genuinely scientific they become, the more 
they discover that if anything seems to be scientific, 
and is not in accord with true religion, it cannot be 
accepted as scientific, but must be held for examin- 
ation. The result of scientific studies in this de- 
partment explains a number of hitherto obscure 
passages in the Bible, and the doctrine of heredity 
is now found to have been in the sacred Scriptures 
as it was in nature, although it has required all 
these centuries to be discovered in both. In the 
first book of Genesis, in the Ten Commandments, 
in the Psalms, in the Prophets, in the words of 
Jesus, in the apostolic writings, these doctrines of 
heredity may now be clearly discerned. We might 
have reached them without the Bible. There is 
much in the Bible which is not essentially a distinct 
revelation from God, because some things written 
therein could have been discovered by unaided hu- 
man intellect, and much was already known when 
the Bible was written. The chief value of the Holy 
Scripture to us as a revelation from God lies in that 



58 MY SEPTVAGINT 

which could not otherwise have been discovered, 
and which it reveals. 

For instance when we look upon so much evil 
in the world that is hereditary, it has a tendency to 
make us pessimistic. When each man looks at the 
evil tendency of his own nature he is apt to say, 
"There is no use for me to try to be moral, decent 
and good; this old blood that I inherited from my 
ancestors, without my will or consent, makes me a 
born and a perpetual scoundrel." It is at this point 
that the revelation of the Holy Scripture comes with 
its important and sustaining influence. It teaches 
us that a man is not responsible for inheriting evil 
tendency; he had nothing to do with that. It 
teaches that no man is held morally responsible for 
any sins of any of his ancestors. In Ezekiel xviii. 
it is explicitly taught, "The soul that sinneth, it 
shall die." For no matter what may have been a 
man's ancestry, if he has walked in the statutes and 
has kept the judgments of the Lord God to deal 
truly, that man is just and he shall surely live. If 
that man by reason of an unfortunate marriage shall 
beget a son that is a robber or a shedder of blood, 
or a committer of other abominations, that son shall 



MY SEPTUAGINT 59 

surely die; he shall not be saved by reason of the 
piety of his father. Now, if that bad man's son, 
the grandson of the good man, see all his father's 
sins which he hath done, and consider and do not 
such like, but fight against his proclivities, he shall 
not die for the iniquity of his father ; he shall sure- 
ly live. 

Another thing follows : no man can release him- 
self from responsibility because he inherits evil pro- 
clivities. Once I had a parishioner who was a man 
learned in the Scriptures and one of the most in- 
structive lay-speakers in devotional meetings I have 
ever heard. He was related to a family of dis- 
tinguished theologians. Weeks before I had alluded 
in a sermon to some phase of transmitted character- 
istics, when I met him on the street, staggering, 
maudlin, slabbering, his beard and clothes soiled. 
He came up to me affectionately, put his hand upon 
my shoulder and said, "Doctor, this is a case of 
atavism. You think I'm drunk : it's my grand- 
father. The old fellow used often to get on a tear ; 
he's on a tear to-day and I can't help it; but" — 
for he probably saw the solicitude in my eyes — 
" I'm all right. Don't be anxious, dear old Pastor, 



60 MY SEPTUAGINT 

I'm one of the elect; but I can't help that old 
grand-daddy's sprees." Now here was a man of 
decided mental power, actually befooling his own 
intellect in regard to so important a matter as his 
moral responsibility. While not responsible for my 
tendencies, and certainly not for the original sin 
which made the initial of the heredity, I am re- 
sponsible before God to use all my power in fight- 
ing against that tendency and in doing right even 
with a nature set to wrong. 

Moreover, the teaching of sacred Scripture is 
that, commencing the race of life handicapped by 
an inherited evil tendency, if I put forth my powers 
so as to carry my load and win the race, my virtue 
will be all the greater and my glory will be mag- 
nified. It is a very easy thing for those who have 
come of a long line of godly ancestors to go on in 
even ways of innocence and of virtue; but it is a 
terrible struggle for those who do good constantly 
against a powerful tendency to evil. The former 
need only float ; they are going down stream ; but 
the latter will often be the strong swimmer in his 
agony, making his way against a powerful and ad- 
verse tendency. 



MY SEPTUAGINT 61 

Still further, these facts go to strengthen the be- 
lief in what is called a supernatural religion. As 
the blood of the world was at the coming of Jesus 
it would have been impossible for the race to purify 
the strain and so bring itself back to original good- 
ness. It was down too low and laden too heavily 
to climb back to the original elevation. Help must 
have come from without. If it had not come, so 
rapid was the deterioration nineteen hundred years 
ago, that long before this date the last carcasses of 
the ruined race would have festered in some lonely 
field. The condition of the world to-day, as ex- 
amined in front of the laws of heredity and the 
facts of history, shows that some powerful influence 
from without must have been planting itself in 
our humanity. 

The Christian thinker has no difficulty with the 
law of heredity. He believes in God as the 
Father Almighty, and as the maker of heaven and 
of earth, which means that he believes that the 
universal scheme was projected and created and is 
now sustained by Almighty Love. So, whether 
he can see it or not, the Christian believes that the 
outcome of every process, long or short, must be 



62 31 Y SEPTUAGINT 

for the general good. He believes that there can 
be no better way, for if there had been another 
way which was better it would have been adopted 
by the almighty and infinitely good Father. So 
he says to himself, "Here and there may come 
passages of difficulty utterly incomprehensible and 
inscrutable ; but the method is true and the final 
outcome will be good." His faith sustains him 
amid all the difficulties that occur in practical 
heredity. 

Even an atheist, who is a scientific man, has 
perceived what is utterly unaccountable on the 
theory of chance, namely, that every process in 
nature has a beneficent trend, and so far as can be 
perceived will have a beneficent outcome. He 
has seen also that almost every process has its dark 
side, or its passage of incompleteness, some hitches, 
so to speak, in the working of the gear of the 
machinery. He cannot believe that there was any 
good intended, because he does not believe that 
there was any one to intend anything : but he can- 
not fail to perceive that there is a development 
working itself or worked by some impersonal 
power outside of itself, which has a direction 



MY SEPTUAGINT 63 

toward the best final results. He must believe 
that the same is true in regard to the law of 
heredity, and believing it so, he brings uninten- 
tionally the results of all his scientific researches to 
buttress the faith of the Christian in the goodness 
of the Almighty Father. 

When a scientific man sees a bad stream of 
blood running through a family, he naturally sets 
himself to solve the question of any possible 
remedy or alleviation. He would go about it as 
cold-bloodedly as he would about making cross- 
breeds of horses or other animals. He says to a 
man whose family have been drunkards through a 
number of successive generations : " When you 
marry you must find for a wife a woman who has 
not this addiction, and who comes from a family 
in which there has been no person suffering from 
dipsomania through as many generations as can be 
known. If you should marry a woman who is 
also a drunkard you would intensify the trait and 
increase the probability of its transmission. But 
if you can find a woman clean of this trait, and 
have children, there may be some mitigation of the 
evil, and if your son can find a similar mate, and 



64 MY SEPTUAGINT 

this can be carried on through the generations, the 
trait may be largely, if not entirely, eliminated." 
This is supposed to be the scientific method, and 
the only one so far as I know yet proposed on 
scientific grounds. 

The Christian religion presents Jesus of Naza- 
reth as its founder and object of worship. He is 
set forth as the world's Saviour, and He may be so 
considered in several ways. He is represented as 
the Son of the Holy Ghost and a holy Virgin. 
By supernatural interposition, the factor in the 
stream of life in which He appeared, so far as the 
father's side was concerned, was entirely cut off, 
and the power of the purity of the Holy Ghost of 
God was put into the nature of this Man. On 
His mother's side He inherited as pure a human 
nature as can be conceived. She was an unstained 
virgin to the core of her soul, but she was a 
woman, and she came of a line in which, and at 
some distance from her, there were many very bad 
men and bad women, as well as many good men 
and women who had occasionally lapsed into 
grievous sin. Slight as was the taint in her, 
nevertheless her blood was human, and even the 



MY SEPTUAGINT 65 

child begotten by the Holy Ghost felt in His body 
now and then evidences of transmitted tendencies 
that on the testimony of the Holy Ghost Himself, 
as Christians believe, this Saviour of mankind was 
"tempted in all points like as we are, yet with- 
out sin." 

Now, this Christian doctrine coincides with the 
teaching of physical science in going to show that 
in this present condition of affairs a man may be 
brought to sinlessness without coming into a state 
in which he cannot be tempted, and without 
coming therefore into a state of impeccability. So 
far forth then as Jesus is our exemplar, He must 
be the standard toward which every man, loaded 
with whatever inherited tendency, must put forth 
every possible effort of his nature to advance — in 
hope ultimately to attain. If there were no more 
in the Christian religion than that, the ideal of 
Jesus, as a stimulus to resistance to evil tendencies, 
would be invaluable to the world. 

But the Christian doctrine seems to set forth 
something more. An implicit faith and an un- 
faltering trust in this Holy One, this Jesus, brings 
an injection of new spiritual blood, so to speak, 



66 MY SEPTUAQINT 

into the spiritual nature of man ; just as by oper- 
ations, carried on scientifically, the physical blood 
of younger people has in modern times been in- 
jected into the bodily veins of people who were 
older. Upon receiving Jesus as their Saviour, the 
sons of whatever bad men acquire power to be- 
come the sons of God. If any one man acquires 
this power and uses it, thus really becoming a son 
of God, then there is in some measure a transmis- 
sion of this blood. Such a man marrying a 
woman who also by the same process has become 
a daughter of God, gives to the child born to them 
both a comparative freedom from the stress and 
pressure of what was inherited from ancestry 
previous to the beginning of this new life. If 
such a process were continued, it is easy to per- 
ceive on scientific principles how Jesus of Naza- 
reth, who lived and died a celibate, should have 
a spreading spiritual posterity which might in 
process of time largely push out the inherited evil 
which now curses human nature. Toward that 
end the frequent and remarkable use of the word 
"inherit" in the Christian Scriptures seems to 
point. 



MY SEPTUAGINT 67 

Still further, the doctrine of heredity shows all 
men removed from perfect physical health. There 
is no one who has not some inherited physical in- 
sanity however slight, and perhaps some inherited 
intellectual insanity however slight. This makes 
it probable that there is no one who has not some 
moral or spiritual defect, however near perfection 
he may seem to be. This illustrates a Christian 
doctrine sometimes called " total depravity." 

That phrase itself is not found in the Scripture, 
but a certain form of the thought is. The idea of 
depravity is applied to all individuals of the race 
collectively, not to any one individual separately. 
"Total depravity" means that the whole race is 
depraved; not that every man, or any man, is 
wholly depraved. 

It is plain that if every faculty were so de- 
praved that not a single healthy intellectual or 
moral function could be discharged, the soul could 
no more exist than could a human body in which 
every physical particle was totally depraved. So 
long as a man is alive and conscious there is 
something in him not utterly depraved. "The 
soul that sinneth it shall die." 



68 MY SEPTUAGINT 

That there is something in each individual nut 
so depraved is assured in the Jewish and Christian 
Scripture by every command which appeals to the 
ethical element in man and by every offer made to 
him of spiritual salvation, by which the Scriptures 
mean the elimination of the sin-taint, never the 
man's safety while he has the sin-taint. 

This seems to be the relation of the scientific 
doctrine of heredity to the Christian doctrine of sin 
and salvation in the sacred Scriptures. A. few 
practical lessons may be of value. 

First, there should be an increased study of the 
responsibility of parentage and an increased insist- 
ence thereupon. From the time a child is born 
his education should be shaped with reference to 
that. Children should not be allowed to drift. 
Morbid and irrational modesty upon this subject 
should be put aside. So soon as it is practicable, 
children should be made to know what parentage is 
and the responsibility of it ; the father teaching the 
son and the mother the daughter. The most pow- 
erful motive which can be brought to bear upon 
children, and young men, and young women, re- 
sides in the presentation of this scientific doctrine, 



MY SEPTUAGINT 69 

connected with the moral teachings of the Bible in 
regard to human responsibility. There does not 
seem to be anything which could have such an in- 
fluence, not only upon young people but upon 
married people, to induce them to keep themselves 
pure; pure in every sense of the word, as to their 
bodies, as to the meats which they eat, as to the 
beverages which they drink, as to all the habits 
which have effect upon the physiological condition. 
From the very beginning children should be started 
to build themselves up high. Young people under 
the power of a faith in this combined scientific and 
Christian teaching, would be careful of their envi- 
ronments and associations. They would go into 
no promiscuous, unselect companies, like the free 
balls in our large cities. They would never dance 
with unknown partners. For they would be taught 
that contiguity often produces and generally pro- 
motes attachments which may lead to marriage, or 
to such sexual intercourse outside of marriage as 
produces offspring. Men would not be carried 
away by the excitement produced by a pretty face 
or handsome figure; but would select partners for 
life as men select partners for business, with a great 



70 MY SEPTUAOINT 

end in view and the employment of the probable 
means of success. And women would never marry 
merely for a home, a settlement or a fortune. 
There does not appear to be any way of driving 
these evils from society, without the pressure of the 
high and moral influence gendered by the combi- 
nation of scientific and moral reasons. 

Secondly, society has always claimed a right to 
interfere with sins which produce physical deprav- 
ity. Men cannot be made good by law ; but they 
may be kept from doing evil by restraint. Every 
bawdy-house, opium-joint and grog-shop in the 
land is preparing men and women to be bad fathers 
and mothers. Plainly no man is fit to be a father 
who deteriorates himself by his lewdness, or intox- 
icates [that is, poisons] himself by his beverages. 
All kinds of houses of ill-fame have simply in view 
the making of money, and therefore do not stop for 
such a consideration as this. But the State has a 
right not simply to look at the present condition of 
its citizenry, but also to consider the future state 
of the whole commonwealth. 

It will thus be seen that the outcome of a thor- 
ough reception of the scientific and biblical views 



MY SEPTUAGINT 71 

presented above would lead to both moral suasion 
and legal enactment for the suppression of the evils 
which come by reason of man's wilfulness under 
the operation of a law which was originally intended 
for the transmission of any goodness which might 
come into the race down through all the generations 
thereof. 



yi. 

MR. MARKHAM'S DREAM. 

Mr. Markham was a respectable man ; he was 
a good man; he was even a churchman. Mr. 
Markham was a philanthropist; he had organizing 
talent and a good deal of perseverance. If some- 
times his friends thought him obstinate, that, at 
least, went to show that he had firmness. 

This excellent person saw the evils of intemper- 
ance, and threw himself with all his strength on 
the side of opposing the prevalent vice. He did 
what he could to break intemperate men from their 
habits. He enrolled them in a society and con- 
scientiously labored for their good. He also threw 
his influence with those who opposed the drink 
traffic. But he had never lived where there was 
not some form of the saloon; he had not thought 
it possible to dry up the fountain, so he had spent 

72 



MY SEPTUAQINT 73 

his energy in keeping men from drinking of its 
stream. The drink traffic had always been, and so 
he felt as if it must always be. To him it had 
come to be like this extraordinary mixture of gases 
which we call atmospheric air. That the air could 
in some measure be purified, if not entirely expur- 
gated of all its evils, he believed. Now, to him the 
drink traffic was like that. If you were living 
where the air was bad, the natural thing was to go 
and live where the air was better ; or, if confined to 
your location, to fetch some germicide, and so par- 
tially cleanse the air you were compelled to breathe. 
The fallacy of this unconcious reasoning on the 
part of the excellent Mr. Markham, is apparent to 
every one who may happen to know that human 
beings are so constituted that every one of them 
must have the atmospheric air in order to live, 
whereas, fortunately, not one of them is so consti- 
tuted that he must have alcoholic beverages in order 
to exist. But Mr. Markham did not see that. He 
had always felt, since his moral sense had been 
aroused to the horrors of the saloon, that something 
ought to be done to restrain the evils of that deadly 
institution. Of course he advocated " license." 



74 MY SEPTUAGINT 

When that had been tried for a long time in a 
moderate way, and was perceived to have no ability 
to restrain the evil of the traffic, and that great and 
good man, John B. Finch, mistakenly, as he ad- 
mitted before he died, proposed high license, very 
high license, Mr. Markham took up the idea with 
enthusiasm, and advocated it with the passion of 
partisanship. The more ardent his partisanship for 
high license, the more violent became his opposition 
to prohibition. 

Unconsciously to himself he came to believe every 
statement, whether of proposed argument or alleged 
fact, made against prohibition. Everything in its 
favor seemed to him insignificant. His dislike 
to prohibition also rested on his belief that that 
method of dealing with the drink question was the 
formidable opponent of his pet " high license " 
scheme. 

That he might contribute his portion of influence 
to the disparagement of prohibition, he took a 
journey to the State of Maine. On the spot he 
investigated that deeply interesting question whether 
it be possible to get a drink in the land of Neal 
Dow. He had very little difficulty in ascertaining 



MY SEPTUAGINT 75 

that there was such a possibility. Indeed he had 
a whole array of facts, real facts and no mistake, to 
show that intoxicating beverages were actually sold 
and bought and drunk in the State of Maine. He 
was confirmed in what he supposed to be the truth 
of his old saying : " Prohibition does not prohibit." 
He went back to his own town and gave the 
whole weight of his influence against prohibition, 
arranging what things he had seen and heard in 
such a way as to impress illogical minds with the 
belief that if, after years of prohibitive legislature, 
a man could get drunk in Maine, therefore all 
strength expended in that mode of remedy was 
wasted. He dampened the zeal and enfeebled the 
energy of many a temperance man. He did not 
intend to deceive his fellows or to befool himself, 
but he forgot to tell his audience that in the whole 
State of Maine there did not exist, there had not 
for years existed, a single distillery nor a single 
brewery, and that not a drop of spirits drunk in 
Maine had been produced in Maine ; but the text, 
the introduction, the body, the peroration of his 
talks were always found to be the same thing — 
"Prohibition does not prohibit." 



76 MY SEPTUAGINT 

He travelled, he labored, he talked, he wrote, 
and every movement of this excellent man only 
strengthened the power of the saloon and weakened 
the efforts of men who were striving to break away 
from the evil habit. It was melancholy to see so 
good a man so thoroughly deluded. 

But the delusion broke. It was not dispelled by 
fact or argument. It found its dissolution in a 
dream. 

One night Mr. Markham went home from one 
of his so-called temperance meetings, complacent 
with himself, for he had told for the hundredth time 
how he found that liquor was sold in Maine, the 
State in which there had been a prohibitory law for 
years, and he retired to his virtuous couch to fall 
into the slumber of the just. In his sleep he 
dreamed, and this was his dream : 

He was dead. He faced his Judge, and his 
Judge catechised him as to his behavior in this 
lower world. He had been baptised and confirmed, 
and had avoided bad habits. He had stood in 
good repute among his fellow-men, and had had a 
conscience which allowed him to accumulate flesh, 
and he had been a philanthropist, and he had 



MY SEPTUAGINT 77 

worked in the temperance cause. That was the 
" brief" of his justification which he handed in, 
alluding to his temperance work with rising inflec- 
tion of voice, with brightening eye, and with evident 
elation of spirit. 

The Judge looked at him searchingly. He 
asked why he opposed prohibition. 

He answered : " Because it does not prohibit." 

When called for his proof, there happened to be 
near him a pale-faced woman, who said to the 
Judge: "It is true what this gentleman says. I 
lived in Maine under the law, and my poor boy 
did get drunk, and now lies in a drunkard's grave 
in the cemetery at Portland." 

"Yes, it is true," added a lawyer, who stood up 
and said : " I had a brilliant future with a lovely 
wife and three dear boys. I was supposed to be at 
least an ingenious lawyer, and I set myself to defeat 
the Maine law, and so I contrived ways of buying 
spirits even in Maine, and I did not perceive how 
the habit was forming on me until it had indurated 
so that I found myself choking to death as in a 
plaster cast." 

Just then a man fresh from the earth came up to 



78 MY SEPTUAGINT 

give his account, and the Judge seemed to suspend 
Mr. Markham's case to hear the newcomer. 

"And where are you from?" 

"Portland, Maine." 

"Your business?" 

"Well, it had no name where I lived. It was 
not a legal business, but, to tell the truth, anywhere 
else I would have been supposed to keep a saloon. 
As it was, I was clandestinely engaged in the drink 
traffic. I cannot say otherwise, for Mr. Brown, 
who was one of our best known lawyers, is standing 
here and knows that he was one of my customers." 

"Where did you get the liquor you sold?" asked 
the Judge. 

"Oh, I was lawful enough on that side. I 
bought it of a man outside of our State, a man who 
was licensed to sell it." 

Whereupon the Judge turned upon Mr. Mark- 
ham, " You, then, are the guilty party. You did 
all you could to make it possible for liquor to be 
sold in Maine. You did all that in you lay to 
make it possible to sell the destructive beverage in 
all the States adjoining Maine. You threw the 
whole weight of your character and influence and 



MY SEPTUAGINT 79 

ability to prevent other States from being like 
Maine without a distillery and without a brewery, 
and you gloried in the bad facts which you had 
collected, and you, and men like you, all the more 
influential for having the reputation of being good, 
maintained such a condition of affairs as that, while 
prohibition really did prohibit in Maine, it could 
not entirely suppress the drink traffic in Maine. 
You, and men of your class, who labored for ' High 
License/ not only perpetuated the drink traffic in 
the States in which a majority of the people were 
still willing to have it, but you spent your time 
and strength outside of the State of Maine, in par- 
alyzing the power of the law which would have 
swept the last vestige of intemperance from the State 
of Maine. You co-operated with this saloon-keeper 
fresh from Maine, and you dared to claim to be a 

foe to intemperance; and you " 

The look and tones of the Judge were such that 
Mr. Markham never heard the close of the sentence, 
but awoke in a cold sweat, and for many a day he 
pondered the question how that fearful sentence was 
going to be finished. 



VII. 
THE ASCENDED CHRIST 

[An Ascension Day Sermon, delivered May 7th, 1891, in 
the Church of the Strangers, before Columbia, Palestine, 
Manhattan, Ivanhoe, Constantine and York Commanderics 
of Knights-Templar]. 

When He ascended up on high He led captivity 
captive and gave gifts unto men. — Eph. iv.: 8. 

Into the history of our race came the history of 
the career of Jesus. That changed all the 
relations of humanity to the universe and to itself. 
That furnished a reason for the existence of 
humanity. That now furnishes a reason for the 
continuance of humanity. That predicts the 
future of humanity. 

The life of Jesus is the foundation of the Chris- 
tian religion. Now, in regard to that religion it is 
well to remind ourselves that it is not merely a 



MY SEPTUAGINT 81 

philosophy or a science, but the inspiration of a 
new spiritual life. We must not forget that to 
live the life of a Christian does not demand any 
particular culture, or mere intellectual assent to 
any propositions, or the belief in any series of 
doctrines. It does not depend on a philosophy or 
a theology, but it does hang on a man's belief in a 
fact. One single historical fact, thoroughly be- 
lieved and lived upon, followed out to all its 
logical consequences in practical living, will make 
any man a Christian. 

The history of eighteen centuries shows this. 
Men have held to manifold forms of philosophy, 
and believed and taught many and diverse theories 
of theology, and have lived and worked under all 
kinds of ecclesiasticism, and yet have manifestly 
been Christians; but no man has failed to believe 
in the fact of the Ascension of the Risen Body of 
Jesus and been a Chrisian, no matter what else he 
believed. He could not be. The denial of the 
Resurrection of Jesus is as distinct and complete 
an abandonment of the Christian religion as the 
denial of the existence of the Jehovah of Sinai 
would be of the Jewish religion, or a denial of the 



82 MY SEPTUAGINT 

existence of God would be of all religion. The 
resurrection and the ascension of Jesus make a 
hinge, the resurrection part of which takes hold 
upon # earth ; and the ascension part on heaven. 

It is indispensable to believe that Jesus the 
Christ rose from the dead. No matter what we 
think of Him, no matter which other part of His 
history we accept or reject, no matter what opinion 
we have of His form and character, if he did not 
rise from the dead, if the Galilean Prophet's dust 
is still reposing in some unknown Syrian grave, 
His claims are all worthless; He is not the highest 
spiritual authority in the universe, as He claimed; 
He is not the Creator of the world, as He claimed ; 
He cannot be the Saviour of the world, as He 
claimed. If he did not rise from the dead, all He 
said and all He did can be treated by mankind as 
the words and deeds of one who must have been 
either a fool or a knave. All Christianity goes 
down with the denial of the resurrection of Jesus. 

This was perceived and announced in the very 
first years of Christianity by its teachers, and 
especially by its very greatest thinker, the Apostle 
Paul, who asserted that if Christ had not risen 



MY SEPTUAGINT 83 

from the dead all the preaching of Christian 
teachers and all the belief of Christian disciples 
were in vain. That point is settled. To believe 
that Christ did not rise from the dead as 
thoroughly abrogates Christianity as to believe 
that there is no God. 

Now this is a very interesting feature in the 
case, that our religion rests not on a theory, but on 
a fact. A theory may or may not be a mistake, 
but a fact is always susceptible of proof. And it 
is very important to remember that nothing which 
ever occured in the history of the world has any 
more evidence to support it than the fact that 
Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified and who 
was buried, rose from the dead. Nothing alleged 
to have occurred in the days of William the 
Conquerer, nothing in the wars of Frederick the 
Great, can bring to the thinking man of the 
eighteenth century more evidence than the resur- 
rection of Jesus from the dead. That is the 
Easter Day part of the hinge. 

To-day we have assembled to consider the other, 
the Ascension Day portion of the divine fact on 
which swings our redemption. To get the full 



84 MY SEPTUAGINT 

force of it we must remember something of the 
forty days preceding this crowning event of our 
Lord's earthly history. I call your attention 
briefly to the facts that He was seen first by one 
woman, then by several women, and then by one 
disciple, and then by two, and then by ten of the 
disciples, and then by the whole eleven, and then 
by five hundred of the disciples at once. He also 
appeared to James, His younger brother. At 
these appearances our Lord ate and drank, and 
showed His hands and His feet. It is to be 
remembered that these were acts repeated through 
nearly six weeks, in which His apostles were being 
taught more deeply as to His natural human 
existence and as to the divine side of His nature. 
It is important to recall the fact that, having 
appeared in the body which He brought out of the 
tomb, He always came into their midst without 
announcement, and always departed without adieu. 
That resurrection and those appearances were 
absolutely essential to the consummation of their 
faith. If He had not risen all their hopes would 
have failed, and their three years of remarkable 
relations with Jesus would have been to them 



MY SEPTTJAGINT 85 

sometimes as an enigma, but generally as the 
remembrances of a dream. It could have been of 
no spiritual benefit to them, and they could never 
use it for the spiritual benefit of others. 

It is also to be remembered that our faith in the 
fact of the resurrection of Jesus does not depend 
wholly upon the testimony of the immediate eye- 
witnesses, but that there are thousands of historical 
facts, the existence of which in our present knowl- 
edge of the laws of human thinking cannot be 
accounted for without the assumption of another 
fact — namely, the resurrection of Jesus. They are 
such as these: The head of a body of religionists, 
in whom they believed as having power to resist 
all force, is murdered on a certain Friday, say in 
a.d. 30. That Friday night there was not a 
single one of them who believed he would ever see 
Him again. There was neither plan nor purpose 
for the future, and there was no purpose because 
there was no object. On the following Sunday 
evening they were reassembled, their hopes were 
rekindled, they were again a body with a head, 
they asserted the resurrection of their leader, they 
asserted it to his murderers, who had still posses- 



86 MY SBPTVA01NT 

sion of his body, which, if they had not lost they 
could have produced. The production of that body 
was absolutely essential to the maintenance of 
their own ground and to the destruction of the 
new religion; but they failed to produce that 
body. The disciples had seen it. It was dead or 
it was alive. If dead it was no more to them out 
of the grave than in the grave. But alive it 
supplied them with every intellectual consideration 
and furnished them with every spiritual stimulus 
to carry this Gospel to the ends of the earth. In 
half a century it had overrun the Roman Empire; 
it was in the remote provinces, it was in Italy, it 
was in distant and humble hamlets, it was in the 
city of Rome. Far to the front there was the 
resurrection. "Jesus and the resurrection;" this 
was the theme of the teaching of the apostles ; this 
was the inspiration of their eloquence ; this was the 
captivating power of their zeal. To account for 
the history of eighteen centuries since a.d. 31 is 
absolutely impossible without the assumption of a 
fact, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the 
dead. Look at an existing fact here before our 
eyes, the presence of this great body of Knights- 



MY SEPTUAQINT 87 

Templar in this church, part of a great institution 
this moment in the United States of America, a 
land far off and unknown when the Christ was 
crucified; but in which every day two or more 
temples are erected to His worship. I look down 
upon this body of uniformed and armed men, the 
Knights-Templar of the city of New York, and I 
ask any thinker to account for the phenomenon on 
the assumption that the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ from the dead is a myth and not a fact. 

We have come together to celebrate the ascen- 
sion of Jesus, the other part of what I have 
ventured to call the great hinge on which Chris- 
tianity swings. The sacred Scriptures of the New 
Testament give the following account of that last 
appearance of Jesus to mortal eyes. St. Mark 
tells us that after the Lord had spoken unto His 
disciples, "He was received up into heaven, and 
sat on the right hand of God." St. Luke tells us, 
in his Gospel, that after Jesus had given the 
promises to His apostles that they should be 
endued with power from on high, He led them 
out to Bethany, on the Mount of Olives; that He 
lifted up His hands and blessed them, and that 



88 MY SEPTUAOINT 

while blessing them He was parted from them and 
was carried up to heaven. This same writer, who 
seems to have been the only educated man in the 
company, in writing the Acts of the Apostles 
enlarged the account, telling us that after Jesus 
had promised His apostles that they should receive 
power from on high after the Holy Ghost had 
come upon them, and that they should become His 
witnesses to the utmost parts of the earth, He was 
taken up from the circle of men among whom He 
stood, and a cloud received Him out of their sight ; 
and that while they stood gazing into heaven two 
men stood by them in white apparel, saying, " Ye 
men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into 
heaven? This same Jesus who is taken from you 
shall come in like manner as ye have seen him go 
into heaven." There are two other facts men- 
tioned in this account: one is that Jesus received 
divine worship from his disciples before the two 
men spoke to them, and that immediately after- 
ward they returned to Jerusalem and began to 
organize for Christian work. 

The importance of the record in regard to the 
Ascension can scarcely be overrated, and yet 



MY SEPTUAGINT 89 

Christendom has seemed to contend itself with 
observance of the Resurrection. But reflect a 
moment upon what would be the state of the case 
if the departure of Jesus had not taken place just 
as recorded in the Gospel. The Lord either 
might have made His farewells to the apostles and 
left them, going away naturally as he had been 
accustomed to do before His death, or He might 
have made a valedictory and have disappeared as 
He had been accustomed to do during the forty 
days immediately after the Resurrection. In 
either case there would have been an incomplete- 
ness in His career, and, however majestic and 
beautiful the outlines of His life, it would always 
appear to succeeding generations something like a 
pyramid whose apex was lost in a mist. 

No ; the earthly career of our Lord was open, 
rounded and complete. The extremes of human 
society saw Him as a human babe, over whose 
public stable-cradle Jewish peasants and Oriental 
sages bent. Out in the open air, on mountain or 
by sea-tide, or in public synagogue or crowded 
temple, He taught through all His ministry, doing 
nothing in secret, keeping no esoteric doctrine for 



00 MY SEPTVAQINT 

cultivated Nicodemuses while teaching something 
else to the fishermen of Galilee and the common 
dwellers of the Jordan. He died in the sight of 
people from every part of the earth, on a hill, in 
full view of Jerusalem when it was crowded with 
visitors assembled to a solemn feast. After His 
Resurrection He had appeared to apostles and 
disciples, men and women, in several places, for 
the space of about six weeks. 

What now was to be done with that body? 
Should it evanesce? What, then, was to become 
of that religion which is to surpass all the religions 
of the world in spiritual power, because it does not 
consist in theological doctrines, however true, or 
ethical precepts, however sound, or in ritualistic 
ceremonials, however aesthetic or imposing, but in 
personal devotion to a Person who is divinely 
human and humanly divine? Would not it also 
have evanished from among men? 

No ! No ! The grand personality of Jesus 
grew grander and more personal to the end. On 
the slope of the Mount of Olives, surrounded by a 
number of persons who should afterward be 
able always to correct and confirm each other's 



MY SEPTUAGINT 91 

recollections, He talked with His apostles, told 
them that some special baptism of the Holy Ghost 
was about to come upon them, that when it came 
they should receive spiritual "power" and should 
then become witnesses to Him unto the utmost 
parts of the earth. His glowing description of 
their coming career of power and glory fixed every 
eye on Him. Each saw Him and all saw Him. 
While they were gazing He began to rise. The 
circle widened with a sense of awe. No man 
knew what was to be next; the Master seemed to 
grow taller and more majestic, fuller of a divine 
beauty than had ever shone on mortal face before. 
And he no longer touched the ground, but rose, 
rose slowly, shooting into the eye of each disciple 
in turn a look of love and confidence, a look 
brighter than the sun and wider than the sky, a 
look that oversplendored each man's intellect and 
made each man's heart swell like an ocean-tide. 
"He went up," up, up, through that clear Syrian 
air under that pure Syrian sky, "while they 
looked steadfastly toward heaven, as He went up." 
As the ages have passed the more the Scripture 
have been studied, more and more Christians have 



92 MY SEPTUAQINT 

come to find the power and comfort which reside 
in the fact of the Lord's Ascension. It illumin- 
ates all the previous life of the Christ. It shows 
how His birth was an incarnation, and that He 
must have had a pre-existence in a divine glory in 
which He was so much at home when His earthly 
career closed. To Nathanael, one of His earliest 
disciples and the most guileless, He said, "Here- 
after ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of 
God ascending and descending upon the Son of 
Man" (John i. 51); and to the cultivated Nicode- 
mus He had said, "No man hath ascended up to 
heaven but the Son of Man, who hath descended 
from heaven" (John iii. 13). When one of His 
most profound discourses had set His disciples to 
doubting He said to them, "What and if ye shall 
see the Son of Man ascend up where He was 
before?" (John vi. 62). In view of His approach- 
ing death He said to His circle of chosen apostles, 
"I came forth from the Father, and am come into 
the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the 
Father" (John xvi. 28). 

The effect of the Ascension upon the first apos- 
tles was instantaneous, powerful and transforming. 



MY SEPTUAGINT 93 

Naturally, while this stupendous event was taking 
place they would be in an absorbing rapture, but 
such states of exaltation are neither wholesome nor 
helpful. The men in white had put to them the 
question why they stood there gazing up to heaven. 
The gaze was natural, but not normal. Men must 
not let any visions of heaven turn them from any 
duties of earth. Whatever revelation God makes 
to the spirit is plainly to give the spirit strength to 
do its earthly work. 

So the disciples returned unto Jerusalem, banded 
together, with themselves united godly women, and 
so stood ready for the next marching orders. 
When those orders came they found that the Lord 
was working; with them and as thev travelled to the 

O ml 

ends of the earth, their ascended Lord, now sitting 
at the right hand of God, which to them must 
have meant the possession of omnipotence, wrought 
with them. If He had still been upon earth, to 
whatever majestic heights He may have risen, He 
could not have been so stimulating to their faith 
as when sitting at "the right hand of God." A 
star in the heavens may be equally near to two 
persons on the planet, although they be in antipo- 



94 MY SEPTUAGINT 

des, while it would be impossible to erect in Jeru- 
salem, or in Rome, or in Paris, or in New York, 
or in San Francisco, a tower so lofty as to be 
simultaneously beheld by the people in all these 
cities. So Jesus never seemed nearer to His apos- 
tles' than He did when He returned to the Father 
and took His seat at the right hand of God. It is 
the crowning fact in His career. 

The Apostle Paul groups in culminating order 
the three facts which, based upon the incarnation, 
are the foundation of the hope of our redemption — 
Christ's death, Christ's resurrection, Christ's ascen- 
sion. " Who is he that condemneth ? " the apostle 
asked ; and his answer is, " It is Christ that died, 
yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the 
right hand of God, who also maketh intercession 
for us" (Rom. viii. 34). He might have died, 
and yet the work of our salvation be left incom- 
plete. He might have risen, and yet the work of 
our salvation be left incomplete. The completing 
fact is that He is ever at the right hand of God. 
On the cross His sufferings made a powerful plea 
for our sins. His emergence from the tomb made 
a powerful plea for our immortality. But both 



MY SEPTUAGINT 95 

would have failed but for His ascension, in which 
He took a glorified human body up through 
the ranks of cherubim and seraphim, of angels and 
archangels, who parted to let Him pass in superb 
majesty up to the throne to eternity, where He 
placed His glorified human body at the right hand 
of God, to be forever in the sight of God the 
Father and in the sight of all the principalities 
of all the worlds ; where He ever liveth, making 
intercession for us, which intercession would be 
powerless without that presence. 

It is never to be forgotten that those two men 
in white, perhaps angels from the upper glory, 
who turned the apostles away from gazing into 
the trackless ether through which their Lord had 
ascended to the gates of glory, turned them away 
to the hard work and rugged hardships attendant 
upon carrying the Gospel to the nations, gave them 
for comfort the wonderful promise, "This same 
Jesus, which is taken from you into heaven, shall 
so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go 
into heaven." 

First notice the preservation of the identity 01 
Jesus, Mary's Babe, the Boy of Nazareth, the 



96 MY SEPTUAGINT 

Master of the Apostles, the crucified, buried, risen, 
ascended Jesus is "this same Jesus." No change, 
no transfiguration breaks in upon the identity of 
our Lord. When Stephen, soon after the Ascension, 
was gazing into the heavens, and saw Jesus at the 
right hand of God, he beheld the very same person 
who broke the bread and delivered the wine at the 
Last Supper, the same person who had expired on 
the cross, had risen from the grave, and had been 
seen by the apostles ascending into heaven. Let us 
never lose sight of that wonderful fact. 

Another great truth is, He is to come again upon 
earth, "this very same Jesus." We must remind 
ourselves that in the Old Testament Scripture which 
they held in their hands, the Jews, at the time of 
the birth of our Lord, had just as clear a promise 
of the First Advent as we have now of the second, 
and yet they had conned those Scriptures and re- 
peated them, losing sight of their grand meaning, 
so that He came and went, and many of them saw 
Him many and many a time and never knew Him. 
Now He is to come again. It is an utter waste of 
time for any man to strive to determine when that 
shall be, but there is nothing in the future more 



MY SEPTUAGINT 97 

certain than that He will come, and that He will 
come out of the heavens ; that as His body was not 
dissipated into the ether, but carried in perfect 
organism, glorified, into the heavens, so "in like 
manner," in that glorified organism, the Son of 
God shall come down among men again. 

My brethren, He may be coming now. When 
He first appeared incarnate among men, the birth 
of the Bethlehem Babe was as noiseless as this 
morning's dawn. But sectarian Jerusalem, so very 
near His cradle, was so absorbed in theological dis- 
putes and civil insubordination, and imperial Rome 
was in such a turmoil of politics and corruption, 
that neither of these centres of civilization knew 
when He arrived. Centuries had elapsed since the 
promise had been made of the coming Seed of 
David, the Messiah, the Deliverer, the Person who 
should unite in himself the offices of prophet, priest 
and king. Great national and political changes 
had occurred; the heroic Maccabean period had 
passed, the Roman Conquest had been completed, 
and still the Deliverer had not come. 

My brethren, let us be on our guard ! He may 
choose an Ascension Day on which to revisit the 



98 MY SEPTUAGINT 

earth. While we worship here He may be already 
arriving, or it may be next Sunday; but soon or 
late, He will come. Let us be found ready. Let 
no sword be laid away. Let no vigilance be re- 
laxed. Let every man of us every day be prepared 
to salute the coming Captain of our salvation when 
He shall enter our asylum or our home or our city. 
How should men live who, on such a day as this, 
come uniformed and armed into a venerable edifice 
erected for His worship? O knights! should any 
of us allow these lives, which have taken the solemn 
vows of the Eed Cross, to be polluted with words 
of falsehood or of filth ? Oh ! knights, should any 
of us whose vows do bind us to deliver the oppressed, 
be found as oppressors when the Lord shall come 
again? Shall any of us, in the campaign against 
infidelity and vice, be found wavering in our loy- 
alty, or sunk in sensual wassail, when our majestic 
Lord shall turn His holy eyes upon us? 

Shall our feet, which are drilled to keep step to 
the march of the Christ's legions, ever walk into a 
saloon, the headquarters of the devil, our Captain's 
chief foe, or cross the threshold of the house of her 
whose "feet go down to death, and whose steps take 



MY SEPTUAGINT 99 

hold on hell"? When your steps are directed to 
your place of business, or to your home, or to your 
church, or to your asylum, oh ! my brethren, go 
expecting the Son of God, expecting to find the 
Commander-in-Chief at every turn, in all your 
walks of life expect to confront "this same Jesus" 
come back to earth once more. 

And so, brethren, let us, His followers, His 
sworn followers, Knights of the Cross, of the Red 
Cross, let us never forget the vows we have made 
to follow Him as our Divine Leader. Whither 
did He go when He walked as the Son of Man 
among the children of man? He went down to 
the sorrowful and to the sinful. So to the sorrow- 
ful and the sinful let us go like the Captain of our 
salvation, carrying helpfulness in our hands and 
love in our hearts. What was the battle our Cap- 
tain fought? It was a battle for the weak against 
the strong, and for the right against the wrong. 
He never antagonized a human hope or a human 
heart. He smote evil, only evil, and stood for the 
right, only for the right. Now, my fraters, dear 
brothers, Sir Knights, let our swords be like His 
sword, "bathed in heaven." In our homes, in our 



100 MY SEPTUAGINT 

business, in politics, in science, in our social life, 
in every way, let our sword be the sword of the 
spirit, never drawn without cause, never wielded 
without right, never sheathed without honor. 

It may be a long and weary battle, but we shall 
be brought oif more than conquerors, and over every 
pilgrimage and path, and upon every battle-field 
let us remember that when He ascended upon high 
" He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men," 
and that He will give us the gifts of faith, of hope, 
and of charity ; that He will minister unto us the 
grace of wisdom, of courage, of strength, and of 
fortitude, and while we are living and when we are 
dying, may we ever utter thus our prayer to the 
Father, "Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, 
that as Ave believe thine only begotten Son to have 
ascended into the heavens, so we may also in heart 
and mind continually ascend, and with Him con- 
tinually dwell." 



VIII. 
THE LIGHT IS AT THE END. 

Air : a Scatter Seeds of Kindness" 

By the order of the Master 

Time began its course in night; 
'Twas the evening and the morning, 

First the darkness, then the light : 
Let us not grow weary watching 

In the shadows God may send; 
Darkness cannot last forever, 

And the light is at the end. 
Go bravely through the darkness, 

For the light is at the end. 

On the paths we now are marching 

Our great Master's feet have trod ; 
And each weary, faltering footstep 

Brings us nearer to our God. 
Then in passing through the valley, 

When the shadows o'er us bend, 
Let us keep our courage steady, 

For the light is at the end. 
Go bravely through the darkness, 

For the light is at the end. 
101 



102 MY SEPTVAGINT 

We shall soon be called to travel 

Through the vale of death's dark shade; 
But we know Who will be with us, 

And we shall not be afraid. 
We shall cheer the way with music, 

Walking with our Master-Friend, 
Leaning on His staff and gazing 

At the light that's at the end. 
Go bravely through the darkness, 

For the light is at the end. 



IX. 

GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

A far day may it be before any American who 
wields a pen shall find heart in him to decline an 
invitation to write about George Washington. 

There was a time when that name was known 
and honored by only a few thousand people, all 
of whom were American colonists. That number 
grew with the years until it came to be millions. 
The area of Washington's fame spread until now it 
fills the world. In 1889 the whole country cele- 
brated the centennial of his inauguration as the 
First President of the United States. There was a 
naval ? military and civic celebration in the city of 
New York, in which, on the second day, the march 
of eleven miles of soldiery, including the President 
of the United States, and the Governors of many 
of the States, was witnessed by over a million of 



104 MY SEPTUAGINT 

people from every State in the Union, and probably 
from every country on the planet. As a pageant it 
was splendid; probably it was unequalled by any- 
thing ever seen anywhere, at any time, in any land. 

In the intervening century George Washington's 
fame had ceased to be the exclusive property of 
America, and had become the cherished possession 
of mankind. On the occasion of the Centennial 
celebration a great number of his countrymen felt 
that he stood out, not only as the leading American, 
but as the leading man of the race. Outside of 
America more people now living know his name, 
than they do that of any other man who ever drew 
a sword or discharged an official function, and count 
him above every other soldier and ruler. Israel- 
ites and Mahommedans rank him second of men, 
the former putting Moses at the head of the list, 
and the latter their own prophet, while probably 
Christians would make the order — Jesus, Moses 
and Washington. Of men not named in Sacred 
Scriptures, more human beings this day know and 
honor the name of George Washington than that 
of any other of the sons of men. 

It is very natural to ask the question, "What 



MY SEPTUAGINT 105 

has made this growth of reverence and love for 
George Washington?" It was not his name. 
That was almost unknown before his day, and in 
itself is exceedingly ugly. We can hardly appre- 
ciate that fact. He has made it so illustrious, it so 
lifts our minds to lofty levels of thought since he 
has worn it, that we can hardly bring ourselves 
back to the perception of the fact that, in itself, it 
merely suggests a place where soiled linen is laun- 
dried, and so is inferior to those other immortal 
names, Shakespeare and Milton (Mill-town), each 
of which presents a picturesque thought, and 
Bonaparte, which is pleasant to ear and mind ; 
and is not to be compared to that most magnifi- 
cent of human names, Napoleon, which can never 
be heard or seen without suggesting thoughts of 
grandeur, apart from the glory added to it by 
its first wearer. 

Washington had no family glory, accumulated 
through centuries, to aid him in his career. The 
most trustworthy investigation into his ancestry 
shows simply plain, good honest English folks. 
His immediate ancestors had settled in Virginia. 
They were well-to-do people, owning much land, 



106 MY SEPTUAQINT 

which at that time was not very valuable, and they 
owned some servants. They were of high character, 
as thousands of others have been, whose names are 
not in history. George Washington had little 
education, the best of which he had obtained by his 
own efforts. It is known that one of his first occu- 
pations was that of surveying land. 

Moreover, it was not any one thing he has said, 
or written, or done, which gives him such surpass- 
ing fame. He never said so wise and great a thing 
that it has not been surpassed in its wit and wisdom 
by some other speaker. He never wrote what will 
probably be remembered when the writings of all 
other men of his generation have been forgotten. 
He did no wonderfulest thing ; he gained no won- 
derfulest battle. He was not half as "smart" as 
Aaron Burr, nor had he half the genius of Alex- 
ander Hamilton, nor was he a hundredth part so 
great a politician as Thomas Jefferson or John 
Adams, who, when he saw an early portrait of 
Washington, exclaimed, "And that dunderhead 
has become President of the United States!" 

And, yet, far above all these he towers. They 
are where they were about a hundred years ago, 



MY SEPTXJAGINT 107 

and he is ten times loftier and more massive in the 
sight of men than he was the day he was inaugu- 
rated the first President of the United States. Of 
no merely human being, one hundred years after 
an event in his history, have there ever been as 
many portraits made as were produced of George 
Washington in the hundredth year after he was 
inaugurated President of the United States. Of 
no other mere man have so many noble, admiring, 
inspiring things been said and written as were writ- 
ten and spoken of George Washington in the month 
of April, 1889. There is probably no language in 
which his praise is not uttered. 

The question recurs: "What has made this 
growth of reverence and love for George Washing- 
ton?" The simple answer is — his character, 
formed on the type and preserved by the principles 
and practices of the Christian religion. 

It is not to be forgotten that his was an age of 
infidelity. The leading infidel nation upon earth 
was the brightest, and had such influence that its 
tongue was the language of courts and polite society, 
and that nation was the best friend of America. 
Voltaire had been dead only ten years, and Diderot, 



108 MY SEPTUAGINT 

in France, was declaring that belief in a God was 
proof of intellectual imbecility. It was at such a 
time, and when distinguished Frenchmen were with 
his army, that at the surrender of the British forces 
at Yorktown, General Washington's orders con- 
cluded with these words: "Divine service shall be 
performed to-morrow in the different brigades and 
divisions. The commander-in-chief recommends 
that all the troops that are not upon duty do assist 
at it with a serious deportment and that sensibility 
of heart which the recollection of the surprising and 
particular interposition of Providence in our favor 
claims" 

If it be said that this was on a special historic 
occasion, and at what was the hour of his greatest 
success, it may be well to trace his military career 
to see how far it was consistent with this public act 
of religious acknowledgement. 

Twenty-eight years before the Yorktown sur- 
render (1753) George Washington was in a mili- 
tary position. This was twenty-three years before 
the Declaration of Independence. England and 
her American Colonies had begun to have trouble 
with the French and the Indians. Washington's 



MY SEPTUAGINT 109 

first public duty was as an envoy, with rank of 
Major, to the French commandant on the Ohio, the 
French having built a line of forts from the St. 
Lawrence to the Mississippi River. He was so 
faithful and successful that on his return to Vir- 
ginia, in 1754, he w T as raised to the rank of Lieu- 
tenant-colonel of a regiment raised by Virginia 
and on the death of the Colonel he succeeded to 
the command. The troops had been brought 
through the wilderness. Washington's first battle 
was with the French and Indians on May 28th, 
1754. In July of that year he made camp at 
Great Meadows, near Pittsburgh, which the 
French had fortified. Here, in his first command, 
having just attained manhood, it was his "custom " 
to have prayers in his camp, for which he is com- 
mended by Mr. Fairfax, father-in-law of George's 
brother Lawrence. Mr. Fairfax wrote to him, "I 
will not doubt your having public prayers in the 
camp, especially when the Indians are your guests, 
that they, seeing your plain manner of worship, 
may have their curiosity excited to be informed 
why we do not use the ceremonies of the French, 
which being well explained to their understanding, 



110 MY SEPTTJAGINT 

will more and more dispose them to receive our 
baptism and unite in strict bonds of cordial friend- 
ship." 

For some years after this he was engaged in the 
French and Indian wars. One of his aids, Col. 
B. Temple, testifies "that frequently on the Sab- 
bath he has known Col. Washington to perform 
divine service with his regiment, reading the 
Scriptures and praying with them when no chap- 
lain could be had." After that he wrote as fol- 
lows to the President of the Council: "The last 
Assembly, in their Supply Bill, provided for a 
chaplain to our regiment. On this subject I had 
often, without any success, applied to Governor 
Dinwiddie. I now flatter myself that your Honor 
will be pleased to appoint a sober, serious man for 
this duty. Common decency, sir, in a camp, calls 
for the services of a divine which ought not to be 
dispensed with, although the world should be so 
uncharitable as to think us void of religion and 
incapable of good instructions." 

When the Declaration of Independence was made 
and resistance to Great Britain was determined upon 
George Washington did not hesitate to take the 



MY SEPTUAGINT 111 

most conspicuous part in the conflict as a confessed 
"rebel." He saw that loyalty to the divine 
government must -sometimes make rebellion to 
human governments and that rebellion against 
God is the only rebellion that should be reprehen- 
sible among men. By the second Congress he was 
chosen as Commander-in-chief of the American 
army. 

The day after he took command of the army an 
order was issued in which we find the following 
injunction: "The General requires and expects of 
all officers and soldiers, not engaged on actual duty, 
a punctual attendance on divine service, to implore 
blessings of heaven upon the means used for our 
safety and defence." 

The Declaration of Independence was made on 
Thursday, 4th of July, 1776. Two days after 
the President of the Continental Congress for- 
warded it to General Washington with a letter 
requesting that it be read at the head of the army. 
It reached Washington at his head-quarters in 
New York on the 9th, and he immediately issued 
orders that the several brigades be drawn up that 
evening on their respective brigade-grounds at six 



112 MY SEPTUAGINT 

o'clock that they might hear the important docu- 
ment. The following is part of the concluding 
sentence as transcribed from Washington's orderly- 
book: "The General hopes that this important 
event will serve as a fresh incentive to every 
officer and soldier to act with fidelity and courage, 
as knowing that now the peace and safety of his 
country depend under God solely on the success 
of our army." 

That is part of Washington's army record. At 
the end of the wars he accompanied his resignation 
of his command of the armies of the United States 
by an address, in which he says: "I consider it an 
indispensable duty to close this solemn act of my 
official life by commending the interests of our 
dearest country to the protection of Almighty God, 
and those who have the superintendence of them to 
His holy keeping." 

On the 30th of April, 1789, General Washing- 
ton became President Washington. In his inau- 
gural address he said: "It would be peculiarly 
improper to omit in this, my first official act, my 
fervent supplication to that Almighty Being who 
rules over the universe, who presides in the councils 



MY SEPTUAGINT 113 

of the nations, and whose providential aids can 
supply every human defect, that His benediction 
may consecrate to the people of the United States 
a government instituted by themselves. . . . No 
people can be bound to acknowledge the invisible 
hand which conducts the affairs of men more than 
the people of the United States. Every step by 
which they have been advanced to the character of 
an independent nation seems to have been distin- 
guished by some token of providential agency. . . . 
These reflections, arising out of the present crisis, 
have forced themselves too strongly on my mind to 
be suppressed. You will join with me, I trust, in 
thinking that there are none under the influence of 
which the proceedings of a new and free govern- 
ment can more auspiciously commence." Then at 
the close of the ceremony President Washington 
and both houses of Congress proceded to St. PauPs 
chapel, corner of Broadway and Fulton Street, 
where prayers were read by the Chaplain of the 
Senate, suited to the great occasion. 

In his subsequent address to the Governors of 
the different States, he made eight distinct refer- 
ences to a superintending Providence. These are 



114 MY SEPTTJAGINT 

the last words of that address : " It remains then, 
to be my final and only request, that your Excel- 
lency will communicate these sentiments to your 
Legislature at their next meeting, and that they 
may be regarded as the legacy of one who has 
ardently wished, on all occasions, to be useful to 
his country, and who, even in the shade of retire- 
ment, will not fail to implore the Divine benedic- 
tion upon it. I now make it my earnest prayer 
that God would have you and the state over which 
you preside in His holy protection, that He would 
incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a 
spirit of subordination; .... and finally that 
He would most graciously be pleased to dispose us 
all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean 
ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific 
temper of mind which were the characteristics of 
the Divine Author of our Blessed Religion, with- 
out an humble imitation of whose example in these 
things we can never hope to be a happy nation." 

Now, all that is given above is part of his 
public life. But it was the same in a long and 
consistent course of behavior; so long and so 
consistent that it would be very difficult to conceive 



MY SEPTUAGINT 115 

how any man of any ability could maintain it if 
he had not a private character of deep and unaf- 
fected piety. There cannot be as much evidence 
to this point as to his invariable saying "grace" at 
the table, constant attendance at church and most 
devout behavior there, and the holding of prayer 
in camp ; and yet, we have what seems quite con- 
clusive. 

His aid, Col. Temple, who has been quoted 
above, has often been heard to say, " that on sudden 
and unexpected visits into his (Washington's) 
marque, he has more than once found him on his 
knees at his devotions." 

The following is an extract from a letter of a 
Baptist minister to The Boston Christian Watch- 
man, dated Baltimore, January 13, 1832: "The 
meeting-house (which is built of stone) belonging to 
the church just alluded to, is in sight of the spot on 
which the American army, under the command of 
General Washington, was encamped during a most 
severe winter. This, you know, was then called 
1 Valley Forge/ It is affecting to hear the old 
people narrate the sufferings of the army, when the 
soldiers were frequently tracked by the blood from 



113 MY SEPTUAGINT 

their sore and bare feet, lacerated by the rough and 
frozen roads over which they were obliged to pass. 
You will recollect that a most interesting incident, 
in relation to the life of the Great American Com- 
mander-in-chief, has been related as follows: That 
while stationed here with the army, he was fre- 
quently observed to visit a secluded grove. This 
excited the curiosity of a Mr. Potts, of the denom- 
ination of 'Friends/ who watched his movements 
at one of these seasons of retirement, till he per- 
ceived that he was on his knees and engaged in 
prayer. Mr. Potts then returned and said to his 
family, i Our cause is lost ' (he was with the Tories), 
assigning his reason for this opinion. There is a 
man by the name of Devault Beaver, now living 
on this spot (and is eighty years of age), who says 
he has had this statement from Mr. Potts and his 
family. I had before heard this interesting anec- 
dote in the life of our venerated Washington, but 
had some misgivings about it, all of which are now 
most fully removed." 

Gen. Knox, who was specially devoted to the 
person of Washington as his Commander, and had 
special knowledge of his habits, because he always 



MY SEPTUAGINT 117 

had free access to him, was also a witness to his 
frequent visits to the grove at Valley Forge, and 
knew that they were for the purpose of uninter- 
rupted prayer. 

A relative of the General is reported, in "Kelig- 
ious Opinions and Character of Washington/' as 
giving the following narrative : " While encamped 
in New Jersey a soldier arrived one morning, about 
daybreak, with dispatches for the Commander-in- 
chief, "from a distant division of the army. As 
soon as his business was known he was directed to 
me as captain of the body-guard, to whom he came 
forthwith, and giving me his papers, I repaired at 
once to the General's quarters. On my way to his 
room after reaching the house, I had to go along a 
narrow passage of some length. As I approached 
his door, it being yet nearly dark, I was arrested 
by the sound of a voice. I paused and listened for 
a moment, when I distinguished it as the General's 
voice, and in another moment found that he was 
engaged in audible prayer. As in his earnestness 
he had not heard my footsteps, or if he heard me 
did not choose to be interrupted, I retired to the 
front of the dwelling, till such time as I supposed 



118 MY SEPTVAQINT 

him unengaged; when returning, and no longer 
hearing his voice, I knocked at the door, which 
being promptly opened, I delivered the dispatches, 
received an answer, and dismissed the soldier." 

Washington often travelled alone reconnoitering. 
One day in June, 1779, when he had his head- 
quarters on the Hudson, he was taking one of 
those rides, and being compelled to make a detour, 
he was caught by the night and alone. He was 
obliged to dismount and pick his way. Finding a 
house he applied for shelter, which was granted. 
The farmer was struck with the noble appearance 
of both man and horse, and took good care of them 
both. At the close of the supper the farmer in- 
formed his unknown visitor that the hour had come 
at which he was accustomed to have family prayer, 
and invited him to be present. To this he readily 
assented, and was then shown to his bed. The 
countryman's wife had mistrusted the visitor, her 
fears being aroused by a late robbery in the neigh- 
borhood, but his behavior at family prayer had 
completely disarmed her. While she and her hus- 
band were talking about the stranger they heard a 
voice from the direction of his chamber, and listen- 



MY SEPTUAGINT 119 

ing heard the words in which, in his private devo- 
tions, he was thanking God for his many mercies, 
invoking blessings on the family whose guest he 
was, and making earnest supplications for the coun- 
try, and the success of the war for liberty. It would 
seem to be a habit of Washington to to make au- 
dible prayer in his private devotions, a habit much 
to be commended, as helping to fix the attention of 
the suppliant upon his own petitions. 

While President of the United States in Phila- 
delphia, Washington was accustomed to retire to his 
room at 9 o'clock. A young member of the house- 
hold, whose chamber was just across the passage 
from the study, once indulged his juvenile curiosity 
by looking into the room sometime after the Presi- 
dent had retired, and saw him kneeling at a small 
table on which was the open Bible. 

But the most unique and interesting proof of the 
interest which Washington took in his private de- 
votions has recently been brought to our attention. 
In April, 1891, there was a final sale of the relics 
of Gen. Washington. These had been the property 
of Messrs. Lawrence Washington, Bnshrod C. 
Washington, Thomas B. Washington and J. R. C. 



120 MY SEPTUAGINT 

Lewis. They were bequeathed by the President to 
Judge Bushrod Washington, from whom they were 
inherited by John Augustine Washington, from 
whom they passed by inheritance to his wife, Mrs. 
Jane C. Washington, and from her by inheritance 
to her son, Col. John Augustine Washington, from 
whom they were inherited by Lawrence Washing- 
ton, who swore to these facts on the 14th day of 
March, 1891, so that there can be no doubt as to 
the genuineness of any of the articles. 

By far the most precious, the most valuable, the 
most sought, of all these relics was a little book of 
24 pages, about the size of an ordinary memo- 
randum book, all written by George Washington 
with his usual neatness and plainness of chirography . 
It shows signs of much but careful use. It is en- 
titled "Daily Sacrifice." It contains prayers for 
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thurs- 
day mornings, and for Sunday, Monday, Tuesday 
and Wednesday evenings. If the book originally 
contained prayers for all the mornings and evenings 
of the week, the rest are wanting. 

I have given some examination to this cherished 
and most interesting little volume, which is now the 



MY SEPTUAGINT 121 

property of Mr. William Evarts Benjamin, of New 
York City. It is manifestly in the handwriting of 
George Washington. Compared with another MS., 
a paper containing the plot and measurements of a 
certain piece of waste land surveyed for Major 
Lawrence Washington, and which was made and 
signed by "G. Washington," and by him dated 
August 23, 1750, I am inclined to believe that the 
prayers were written in Washington's early life, 
probably about the time he started on the military 
expedition to Western Virginia in 1754. 

On the first reading it occurred to me that they 
Avere compilations from prayers written by others, 
but I have not been able to find those prayers else- 
where, and there are internal marks which seem to 
point to the probability that they were original pro- 
ductions. Whether that be so or not, they are such 
prayers as could be composed only by a person 
familiar with the Book of Common Prayer, much 
usage of which imparts a certain tone and turn of 
expression not in prayers made without the book. 
It would seem that Washington had prepared these 
prayers for piivate use, but had so written them 
that if read in the family or in camp they might be 



122 MY SEPTUAGINT 

adopted by the other worshippers and so be made 
social prayers. 

But even if copied, the fact of their existence in 
the chirography of Washington shows his value of 
private devotion, the care with which he prepared 
for it, the regularity with which he observed it, and 
the profound Christian convictions by which he 
was sustained in the discharge of that duty. For 
after all, it is the closet-religion which is the test 
and measure of a man's personal piety. 

It is proper to seize every occasion to refresh the 
memory of the nation in regard to that faith which 
was the cement of the great parts of Washington's 
character, holding them together in a massive struc- 
ture. It is impossible to conceive that George 
Washington could have been as great a man as he 
was, and be wielding such influence as he still does, 
if he had not been a Christian. Let our young men 
ponder what he would have been if his character 
had been formed on the doctrines of materialism, 
or of positivism, or of so-called humanitarianism. 
He would now be absolutely unfelt among the moral 
forces of the race. If he had accepted the teachings 
prevalent in his day and still offered our young 



MY SEPTUAGIJStT 123 

men by the rejecters of Christianity, he might have 
been a Robespierre; but what moral influence does 
Robespierre exert this day, in which George Wash- 
ington is holding the attention and improving the 
character not only of men but of nations? No; if 
George Washington be worth anything the rejecters 
of Christianity are of no value to society. If 
Christianity be baseless, then a miserable error has 
in it power to make a man of no shining qualities 
the most influential and honored of his generation. 
If Christianity be false then George Washington's 
lofty life of truth proves truth worthless, which is 
an absurdity. If, for instance, Mr. Robert G. 
Ingersoll be true, then George Washington is a 
sham and a lie. Who will dare to assert that?] 

It is proper, also, to keep before the minds of the 
American people the fact that the character of 
George Washington stands guardian over the in- 
terests of his country. No President can bravely 
do what he believes to be right without being sus- 
tained and comforted by feeling that he has the 
lofty companionship and the sublime approval of 
George Washington. No high official can yield 
himself to the dictation of cliques, "shysters," 



124 MY SEPTUAGINT 

"boodlers," "repeaters," and all the hungry horde 
of men to whom politics is a business, without feel- 
ing that all the parade and pride of the Centennial 
Celebration of 1889, all its multitudes and thunders, 
all the constant increase in the power of George 
Washington's character are folding down upon his 
conscience the form of the one man whose disap- 
proval, next to that of God, men felt to be in his 
day, and still feel to be, the deepest damnation that 
mortals can endure this side the awards of eternity. 
Let these things be remembered and repeated 
and taught everywhere, and the nation shall grow 
in everything desirable in nationality, and the 
public and private prayers of George Washing- 
ton, the father of this country, shall be abundantly 
answered. 



X. 
HOWAED CROSBY. 



It is not true, dear friend, it is not true 
What the great English senator hath said, 

" The age of chivalry is past." For you 
Have shown the saying false. 

Who calls thee dead ? 

" Dead ? " As a knight is, when he doth but lay 
Aside his armor with the battle won ; 

Dead as a knight is, who has gone away, 
In better mail, beneath another sun, 

To urge far fiercer battles in the fray 
'Twixt Eight and Wrong, where thou canst clearly & 

The lines which often in thy mortal day 
Were hidden in smoke of struggle. We 

Think only of thy palpitating soul 
That longed to strike the tyrant down and see 

The weak uplifted and the sick made whole. 



125 



126 MY SEPTUAGINT 

The King hath touched thy shoulder with his sword 

Again, Sir Knight, and bidden thee once more rise. 
And thou hast hearkened to thy great War-Lord. 

Go up, go up unto thy well-won skies, 
While we stay here and think and talk of thee, 

Until we too shall have our summons hence, 
So by thy name make men love chivalry 

And dare do right without ruean thought of consequence. 



1891. 



XL 
GIVING THANKS. 

" Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is 
within me, bless His holy name." That is : Speak 
well of Jehovah. O my soul ; speak well of His 
holy name. 

Does not this imply that my soul has to be 
called upon to speak well of God ? Does not that 
show that the tendency of my nature is to forget 
benefits and to be unthankful? It is not very 
complimentary to "my soul" that every now and 
then I have to make this loud call that it should 
perform a service that ought to be so natural, and 
that always is so profitable. 

That something has been overlooked seems to 
be very clear from the name that we attach to this 
service — namely, "thanksgiving." This seems to 

imply that when I express thanks for favors I am 

127 



128 MY SEPTUAGINT 

really giving something, that when I speak well of 
one who deserves eulogy I am giving something. 
Now, in point of fact, that is true ; but there is 
something else that I overlook — namely, the im- 
possibility of speaking well of any being in the 
universe without making myself better. Reflex 
action is forgotten — and I almost fear making a 
contribution to my own selfishness and to the 
selfishness of others by calling attention to this 
fact — but, planting this danger-signal on that side, 
I wish to emphasize the fact that the thanksgiver 
is always the party most benefited in any act of 
thanksgiving. 

I begin at the bottom of my relationships with 
mankind. I am passing along a crowded portion 
of our city ; I drop an empty envelope. A dirty 
little chap picks it up, and, supposing it may be of 
some value, runs and hands it to me. This little 
incident is as near to nothing as I can well imagine. 
There are two courses for me to pursue. Perceiv- 
ing that it is nothing except an empty envelope 
that I had thrown away, I may drop the worth- 
less piece of paper and walk on without the slight- 
est notice of the little fellow who brought it ; or I 



MY SEPTUAGINT 129 

may turn and thank him politely as I would the 
mayor of the city if he should do such a thing 
for me, and may put the envelope in my pocket 
and not destroy it until out of sight of my little 
would-be benefactor. He might be perfectly 
callous and not care which of these two courses I 
pursued ; but how about myself if I had allowed 
the child to go without a word or even a glance 
of thankfulness? 

So, through all our human relationships, it is a 
positive means of grace, it is most effectually im- 
proving, to notice, to dwell upon, and to be thank- 
ful for every act of every human being that is 
helpful to me, whether intended to be so or not. 
Where there is evident intention to be kind to me 
it is ingratitude not to return it with thanks, and 
there is actually nothing that so effectually and 
so rapidly degrades a human character as ingrat- 
itude — no, not even intemperance and licen- 
tiousness. 

Now the question occurs, Am I sufficiently 
thankful to my fellow-men ? If I sit down in my 
drawing-room or in my study and look around, I 
shall not be many minutes in discovering that there 



130 MY SEPTUAGINT 

must be now living hundreds — yes, thousands — 
of my fellow-beings — mechanics, manufacturers, 
artists, merchants and sailors, to whom I am 
indebted for the things about me that minister to 
my bodily comfort, to my intellectual growth, and 
to my spiritual improvement. It occurs to me 
that I might be a better man if I took my pad 
and began with the articles nearest to me — the 
Turkish rug under my feet, and the easy chair in 
which I am' sitting, one sent me from Asia, and 
one given me in New York — and then made an 
inventory not only of the things that are presents, 
but of those things for which I have paid money, 
but which no money could have procured if my 
fellow-men had not wrought to produce them. I 
ought to be profoundly thankful that I live as a 
member of our great thinking, working, pushing 
humanity. I ought to be thankful that I did not 
live in any preceding century, but that I live now, 
when any man can do more for himself and his 
fellow-man in any one week than he could have 
accomplished in any month eighty years ago. 
Plainly, then, I ought to be thankful to my fellow- 
men who lived in the preceding centuries, and who 



MY SEPTUAGINT 131 

so wrought as to make it possible for my genera- 
tion to do more for society in the last fifty years 
than others had been able to do in any five pre- 
ceding centuries. 

I have had some terrible battles to fight and 
some bitter cups to drink, but I ought this day be 
thankful that I was ever born, even when I regard 
only the past. When I think how that past has 
put me on the road toward the future in which 
there may be thousands of blessed hours in this 
world, and in which I know there is a place being 
prepared for me, as I pass out of this mansion in 
the Father's house, I ought to be profoundly 
thankful. Dear reader, may you have the same 
sentiment. 

I stood before a great crowd lately, and ren- 
dered my devout and earnest thanksgiving to 
Almighty God that He had spared my life to be 
present at the tenth annual Christian Endeavor 
Convention in Minneapolis, last July. From my 
boyhood up to that day I always had a secret wish 
that I might have been present at Pentecost ; but 
since that Convention the wish has entirely dis- 
appeared, for at that Convention I beheld a sight 



132 MY SEPTUAGINT 

surpassing anything that had been vouchsafed to 
any of the apostles of our Lord in the flesh. 

So, far beyond the limits allowed me, I might 
spread this article over the fields of my blessing, but 
I wish with still greater emphasis to recur to the 
improving power of a cultivated habit of speaking 
well of God. It is very easy to fall into the habit 
of finding fault with God and with our fellow-men. 
Whoevever has tried both knows that every time 
he has spoken bad things of his neighbor or has 
complained of his God, he has become smaller and 
harder and worse, and, also that every time he 
has indulged in the feeling and speech of thankful- 
ness toward God or man he has become a better 
man. So, O my soul, I call upon thee to speak 
well of Jehovah, not because He needs it, but 
because, O my soul, thou needest it. 

Let me make a recommendation to my fellow- 
Christians. On Thanksgiving Day take a pad 
and write in one column what you think you 
ought to be thankful for to your fellow-men, and 
in another column what you ought to be thankful 
for to our Heavenly Father. Do not stop to make 
this list in any connected or logical order; dash 



MY SEPTUAGINT 133 

down the first thing that occurs to you, then the 
next and then the next. Then once a week, until 
the following Thanksgiving Day, look over the 
list and amend it. Let me advise that you begin 
with a pad and not a sheet, or with a book and 
not a page. Give God room. 



XII. 
THE YEARS. 



The years that come to us are dumb. 
Their footsteps, rhythmic, low, 

We hear not as they swiftly come 
And yet more swiftly go. 

Each brings us something we must keep, 
And each doth something take ; 

Thus we are changing while we sleep, 
And changing while we wake. 



XIII. 

ASSUMPTIONS. 

Around the definite boundaries of the scientific 
territory there lie many things which, to superficial 
observers, seem to be part of that territory. There 
are many assumptions found almost constantly in 
our literature which have not the slightest scientific 
foundation. There are things assumed to be facts 
which never have had any existence except in the 
brains of those who have evolved them for the pur- 
pose of sustaining some hypothesis. It is charac- 
teristic of our age to rest as much upon these dreams 
as upon those things which have stood the test of 
scientific examination for several centuries. 

Let us look at some of these assumptions. 

We find our first illustration in an article by 
Grant Allen, in the "Fortnightly Review." He 
calls it " Practical Religion " — but by practical re- 

134 



MY SEPTUAOINT 135 

ligion he means worship, the temple, the altar, the 
sacrifice, as distinguished entirely from anything 
and everything within the man, such as faith and 
hope and charity. In order to establish his posi- 
tion he collects his facts from the book "Africana," 
written by the Rev. Duff MacDonald, a Presbyter- 
ian missionary in Central Africa. Mr. MacDonald 
is certainly good authority for the facts. Mr. 
Grant Allen holds that they show that all religious 
nations agree in the "primitive" respect and rever- 
ence for the worship of ancestors. It is not now 
undertaken to examine his argument, but it is in- 
dispensable to that argument to assume that the 
original condition of man was just the condition of 
the savages whom Mr. MacDonald found at the 
Blantyre Mission in Africa. It is assumed that 
men began at the bottom, as in this remark : " I 
have quoted at such length from this recent and 
extremely able work because I want to bring within 
strong relief the fact that Ave have here going on 
under our very eyes, from day to day, de novo the 
entire genesis of new gods and goddesses." It is 
plain that we have no such thing. 

We object to this groundless and persistent as- 



136 MY SEPTUAGINT 

sumption that at one period of the history of the 
race, mankind existed without any idea of the 
supernatural whatever, and that the theistic idea 
is one that was gradually evolved. Now, this is a 
pure assumption, without the slightest foundation 
in fact. There has never been brought forward 
anything whatever to prove it ; but everything that 
has come within the knowledge of scientific and 
philosophical men points to the probability of the 
exact opposite. The Africans in the Blantyre Mis- 
sion are not a people who have come up from 
something lower, and are using a position which 
they have gained as steps to some higher platform ; 
on the contrary, these people are most probably 
descended from those who had the supremest belief 
in the existence of a God, and a much clearer idea 
of his nature than that of any existing savages. 

This baseless, dreamy assumption was made be- 
cause it is necessary to a certain special form of the 
evolution hypothesis. That accounts for its " gene- 
sis." There does not seem to have been discovered 
a single fact in the history of mankind to justify 
any man in using the phrase "genesis of the theistic 
idea/' That idea in man is not the product of a 



MY SEPTUAGINT 137 

"genesis". It is probably the result of a revelation. 
We have nothing on which to rest the probability 
that the human mind would ever have reached the 
idea of God if God himself had not made it known. 

It really becomes tiresome to have these assump- 
tions taken as if they were fixed facts. If we know 
anything of the past at all, we know that the first 
peoples upon the face of the earth had clear con- 
ceptions of God, and they themselves declare, and 
have transmitted to us through tradition, the fact 
that they did not reach the idea of God by any 
logical process or intellectual evolution, but that 
they received it from God himself. The cool 
manner in which such writers as Mr. Grant Alleu 
set aside known facts and well-established history, 
when they stand in their way, will make these gen- 
tlemen objects of amusement to the enlightened 
generations which are to succeed us, provoking as 
they are to those of us who are compelled to be 
their contemporaries. 

We have another assumption which is expressed 
to us in the phrase " Prehistoric Man." We hear 
very much of it, but we can find nothing of him 
whatever except here and there a shred or two of 



138 MY SEPTUAGINT 

the stuff of which dreams are made, on which shred 
or two somebody has written the initials "P. M." 
Now, either there was or there was not such a per- 
sonage. If there was such a personage then he 
ceases to be prehistoric, for we can know nothing 
of him if we cannot have at least this little bit of 
history that he once was. To be actually prehis- 
toric would keep the man so entirely out of our 
view that he never would be thought of. We 
might just as well talk about systems in space that 
never were in the range of human vision and have 
long ago disappeared from the universe. What 
would be thought of an astronomer who should be 
perpetually assuming that there were created worlds 
before any act of creation? Does not that whole 
body of evidence of the existence of men, of whom 
we had no account until we came upon some relics, 
show rather that there may have been races existing 
in what are historic times for us, but on which they 
made no trace? That is conceivable. Has any- 
thing more been proved? But if evidences shall be 
found anywhere of the existence of such men, very 
plainly the true phrase would be " non-historic" or 
" ex-historic," certainly not j5re-historic. The whole 



MY SEPTUAGINT 139 

of any race of generated beings must have come 
from an original pair. Now, we have very much 
of the history of the first pair of human beings who 
existed. There cannot be anything of a series be- 
fore the beginning of that series. The phrase pre- 
historic man, therefore, embeds a fallacy in its very 
formation. 

These two are probably the most frequent assump- 
tions without any foundations now current in our 
literature. But we fear that there is a growing dis- 
position in their direction. For instance: Here is 
an article on the "Origin of Death" in the "Eclec- 
tic Magazine," February, 1890, in which it is held 
that in any form of complexity of structure the first 
departure from simplicity the seeds of death were 
sown. In the argument it is stated that there are 
living things innumerable which have escaped and 
will continue to escape the common lot of death ; 
that these beings are untroubled by an anxious 
search after the elixir vike, and for them has been 
solved the riddle of the painful earth ; and that the 
only drawback to their immortal life is that they 
do not know that it is theirs. It is held that these 
immortal creatures are one-celled animals of whom 



140 MY SEPTUAGINT 

the amoeba is taken as the type. This little im- 
mortal is described as a minute, jelly-like, irregular- 
shaped particle of protoplasm ; as if any one knows 
that there is any protoplasm ; in the sense in which 
it was used before its more recent technical employ- 
ment in anatomy to designate that something, like 
the watery part of the blood, which fills elementary 
cells. It lives in the water, and is always changing 
its shape. It takes in and ejects food at every point 
of its body, every part doing everything. It does 
not generate. When it has reached a certain size 
it divides equally, so that there are two of it, or 
them, whichever may be scientifically grammatical. 
And this goes on ad infinitum, each half " being a 
separate individual exactly like its fellow, and pass- 
ing through the same stages of growth and fission/ 7 
But the main point is left out of the article. Is 
it assumed that all that have ever been portions are 
to be taken collectively as one immortal? That 
would be to make a divided individual. Or is it 
assumed that the first amoeba, the little bit of orig- 
inal jelly-drop, is still alive, having first become 
two, then four, then eight, then sixteen? What 
space of time does it take to fetch on a fission in 



MY SEPTUAGINT 141 

any one of these particles. If any one will take 
his slate and multiply one by two, and go on dou- 
bling, he will soon come to find immense numbers. 
What is to hinder the original amoeba from being 
in existence when all the waters of the world shall 
have been crowded with these living things, as the 
amoeba is not amphibious? What is to become of 
things when every particle of water is crowded with 
a population that has no room? The author guards 
against that by saying that it is not mere death, 
that molecular death which is the condition of life 
everywhere, but only that since the beginning of the 
life of the amoeba on this planet that life has known 
no death by senile decay or by definite arrest. 
Will anyone tell us how that could be scientifically 
discovered? We have heard of a very old lady 
who heard that the crow would live a hundred 
years, and bought a young one to see if that were 
true. But who can or could know this to be a 
fact? If it be a fact, that original created solitary 
amoeba is still in existence amongst its countless 
parts, unless itself has been destroyed by some ex- 
traneous agency. Does it wear a tag? 

Is all this stuff science? That is to say, is it the 



142 MY SEPTUAOINT 

result of properly observed and accurately recorded 
observations of phenomena which present themselves 
to one of the five senses, together with such induc- 
tions as may be made therefrom by a carefully con- 
ducted process of legitimate reasoning? Whatever 
does not fulfill these conditions is not science. It 
may employ some of the technicalities of science. 
It may put on the air of science, but when a really 
scientific man comes to listen to it, it sounds like 
a "lingo." Let us have done with such things. 
The rougish little grandson of a great philosopher 
does not become a philosopher by putting on his 
grandpa's gown and spectacles. 



xrv. 

MRS. HAY AND MRS. JONES. 

Mes. Hay and Mrs. Jones were two excellent 
Christian women, near neighbors, living in the 
same town. They were communicants in the 
same church, and greatly respected by their rector. 
If they had not had peculiarities, they would never 
have been noticed. One of the peculiarities of 
Mrs. Hay was that she took special interest in all 
sick people; one of the peculiarities of Mrs. Jones 
was that she had reached the time of life which 
seemed to justify her friends in speaking of her as 
"old Mrs. Jones," which fact made her sensitive 
as to her age. Into any conversation if there 
came any indication that it was nearing the station 
of " age," she changed the switch and started the 
train on to another track. 

Mrs. Hay had no inordinate curiosity, and she 

143 



144 MY SEPTUAGINT 

had great respect for the sensibilities of other 
people. So these two good neighbors got on in a 
very lovely manner with each other until a very 
unfortunate mistake intervened. 

It came to pass that Mrs. Jones fell sick, and 
was sick quite a while. It is needless to state that 
Mrs. Hay visited her every day, as a rule. One 
day some domestic detention kept Mrs. Hay at 
home until it was late in the morning. She was 
anxious to hear from her neighbor, but perceived 
that she could not visit her until the afternoon. 
So she called John, a stupid boy in her employ, 
and said — these are the precise words: "John, go 
over and inquire how old Mrs. Jones is." 

Now John had not the slightest idea of the 
value of the collocation of words; so, when he 
reached the house and met the servant girl at the 
door, and said : " Priscilla, Mrs. Hay sent me over 
to ask you how old is Mrs. Jones." 

" Oh, John/' said Priscilla. " I would not dare 
for my life ask Mrs. Jones such a question as 
that." 

But there was a strain of fun in Priscilla's 
Quaker blood, and so she added, in a quiet, 



MY SEPTUAGINT 145 

friendly tone: "But she's lying in the back room, 
and thee may ask her thyself, if thee wish." 

In John walked. Mrs. Jones was convalescent : 
but this Was one of her nervous days. John 
planted himself on his sturdy legs in front of Mrs. 
Jones, who didn't like the interruption and who 
saluted him with a short "Well, John?" 

"Mrs. Jones," shouted the quite honest but very 
stupid boy, "Mrs. Hay sent me over to ask how 
old you are." 

Allow for a sensitive woman who is sick. She 
was too nervous to remember all Mrs. Hay's 
kind considerateness during the years of their long 
acquaintance, and she did not think for the mo- 
ment of the well-known stupidity of John. She 
merely caught fire from the spark dropped on the 
powder place of her character, and exclaimed: 
" Tell Mrs. Hay that it is none of her business." 

This was said in a tone which hastened the 
departure of even the slow and stupid John. 

"Well, John, what did Mrs. Jones say?" asked 
Mrs. Hay. 

"She said it was none of your business: and she 
was mad " 



146 MY SEPTUAGINT 

Mrs. Hay was too pre-occupied to reflect that 
this message from Mrs. Jones must be the result of 
some misunderstanding. In another frame of 
mind she would have recollected John's stupidity. 
Now she felt only the sting of such a message 
from a woman whose susceptibilities she had 
always respected and whose sickness she had 
amiably attempted to alleviate. To be told by 
that neighbor that it was none of her business 
what the condition of her health was seemed in- 
tolerable. It implied that her message of kindness 
had been taken as a question of impertinence. 
She almost fell ill herself. 

Several weeks passed over the heads of these 
two very good and very unhappy women. Mrs. 
Hay did not visit Mrs. Jones, although she could 
not help missing the former friendly intercourse. 
Mrs. Jones was glad that Mrs. Hay did not call, 
although she felt a secret desire that things were 
as they had been. The circle of church ladies 
noticed the coolness between "old Mrs. Jones and 
Mrs. Hay when they met and regretted it but did 
not mention it, and considerately abstained from 
making inquiry as to the cause, 



MY SEPTUAGINT 147 

Gaps in social life, as elsewhere, are apt to 
widen with time. It was not otherwise in this 
case. No one seemed to know how to mend the 
breach. The rector was at his wit's end, having 
waited and watched for months hoping that some- 
thing would appear to indicate the cause of separa- 
tion which was apparently without a quarrel, and 
so to suggest some method of healing the breach. 
But it was all in vain. Each of the two good 
ladies stood on her dignity and secretly suffered 
from a longing for the old-time relations to which 
neither allowed herself to allude. 

One Sunday, on his regular visitation, the 
Bishop preached. He knew these two ladies, but 
had heard nothing of the alienation. His sermon 
was on the duty of forgiveness. Among other 
things he said that sometimes there were separa- 
tions between chief friends where there was nothing 
to be forgiven, only something to be explained; 
that in very many cases where Christians had parted 
the consciences of both reproached them as being 
unforgiving when, in point of fact, that was not 
really true of either of them; that in such a case 
the one who felt most injured should seek the 



148 MY SEPTUAGINT 

other and before either offering or asking forgive- 
ness, or requiring or offering apologies, should 
prayerfully seek an explanation in which, most 
probably, it would appear that there was simply 
some past misunderstanding which would vanish 
at one kind word spoken by either of the parties. 

The Bishop was not given to ornamenting his 
brief and pungent sermons with anecdotes. On 
this occasion, however, he told of two gentlemen 
who were communicants in the same church, of 
which one of them was senior warden. They had 
stood apart for some time, one having heard that 
the other had criticised him unkindly. It was a 
sore in the church. At last one went to the other, 
and said : "See here. We used to be good friends ; 
we are not now. I'm afraid it's my fault; and as 
I am the older man, I concluded to come over and 
confess my fault. But let us pray together that I 
may discharge this duty to you in the right spirit, 
and not blunder into making bad worse." There 
was no resisting that appeal. So down they knelt ; 
the elder prayed, and then the younger. And as 
they prayed, the nearer each drew to their Father 
the nearer he drew to his brother, until their hands 



MY SEPTUAGINT 149 

clasped at the feet of Jesus, and when they arose, 
with tear-wet faces, each declared that he had noth- 
ing to forgive or even to explain. From that time 
forth they were a combination which made itself 
felt as a spiritual power in the church. 

Whatever was the effect of the sermon on the 
congregation generally, two good women went home 
greatly stirred by it. After dinner Mrs. Hay sat 
down to think it all over. She began to reflect 
that perhaps she had nothing to forgive, and that 
if she could have the courage to go to Mrs. Jones, 
it might all be explained. But how could she? 
Had not Mrs. Jones fairly shut the door in her 
face? But could not some way be discovered to 
secure the explanation without a surrender of her 
dignity? She began to pray that it might be so. 

In the meantime Mrs. Jones was doing her think- 
ing. Going back to the beginning she examined 
Mrs. Hay's message. Was it a crime to want to 
know any one's age? Mrs. Hay was a good wo- 
man, and had always been a wise friend. Might 
she not desire that information for something that 
involved the good of Mrs. Jones, and not for the 
mere indulgence of a vulgar curiosity? How could 



150 MY SEPTUAGINT 

she ascertain that? She fell to praying. The re- 
sult was that she sent Priscilla over to present her 
" compliments " to Mrs. Hay — she had always sent 
her "love" before the estrangement — and to ask 
Mrs. Hay to do her the favor to come over to her 
house, or, if it should be more agreeable, Mrs. 
Jones would call on Mrs. Hay. 

The drilled Priscilla had a more cordial welcome 
from Mrs. Hay than she ever received before, and 
she delivered her message in the very words and, 
as far as practicable, in the very tones of Mrs. 
Jones. What a relief it was to Mrs. Hay ! 

"Yes, Priscilla, tell Mrs. Jones Pll come in a 
very few minutes. And see here, Priscilla, did you 
hear what message John delivered to Mrs. Jones 
the last time he was at your house?" 

" John told me that thee had sent over to inquire 
how old was Mrs. Jones; but I did not hear what 
he said to Mrs. Jones; but she told me that she 
thought hard that thee should be inquiring her age 
through a boy like John." 

The whole thing flashed on Mrs. Hay. She 
caught up her bonnet and shawl, swept past the 
astonished Priscilla, and rushing into Mrs. Jones's 



MY SEPTUAGINT 151 

presence fell on her neck and sobbing, cried out with 
an affectionately reproachful tone, "You dear old 
friend, how could you think I could do so mean a 
thing as to send you so impudent a message by a 
boy who might have circulated your reply through 
the whole neighborhood? But I can see how you 
would feel as you did. It was cruel of me to be 
careless in my message ; and I do not blame you at 
all for the way you've treated me. It served me 
right. But oh! I have missed you so much ! You 
are so good ! I am so thankful that you have for- 
given me. Kiss me!" 

"Oh, I'm the one to be forgiven, Mrs. Hay. 
You did nothing but send a kind inquiry in regard 
to my health. It was cruel in me to misread such 
a message from such a woman as you are, you dear, 
good, thoughtful friend ! " And Mrs. Jones held 
Mrs. Hay to her heart most warmly. Their little 
hysterics soon expended themselves but it took them 
an hour to conjugate their lives, that is, to talk over 
all that they had "been and done and suffered" 
during the separation. 

That afternoon they went together to the Dorcas 
Society, arm in arm, to the great delight of the 



152 MY SEPTUAOINT 

Sisters. It was a glowing, joyous meeting. All 
were glad, but none alluded to the breach or the 
healing in the presence of the two ladies concerned. 
But the town was soon acquainted with the good 
news, and a new life seemed to come into parish 
work. 

Do you know why I tell this story to you? 



XV. 

WHENCE. 

A Thanksgiving Hymn. 

I. 

Whence came the soft and milky corn 

The lowland vales enriching ? 
Whence hawthorn blossoms that adorn 

Our country lanes bewitching ? 
Whence came the clouds that hang aloft 

O'er earth their fine pavilions ? 
The herds on meadows and in croft, 

That feed earth's hungry millions ? 

II. 

Whence came the flowers that fill the air 

With fragrance born of beauty ? 
And whence came all things pure and fair, 

Which win men unto duty ? 
Whence came the rays so swift and bright, 

On sea and land so glorious ? 
And that unseen imperial might, 

Which makes man's will victorious ? 
153 



154 MY SEPTVA01NT 

III. 

Whence came the father-heart in man ? 

The mother-heart in woman ? 
The love throughout the mystic plain, 

Which makes God's children human ? 
These came not blindly into birth, 

All blessed things are given ; 
And all delights receive thsir worth 

From that sweet touch of heaven. 



XYI. 

CRYSTALS AND HERETICS. 

Doctrine, as taught in Holy Scripture, comes, 
in a state of solution, into the minds of men. 
When from that solution the doctrine crystallizes, 
in one class of minds the crystals will form them- 
selves on a certain given axis and at certain given 
angles. In other minds they will form on another 
axis at other angles. The substance is the same ; 
the crystals are different. Among Christians, all 
those in whose minds the solution has crystallized 
in the same way will form themselves into one 
church or denomination, and those in whom it 
crystallizes differently will form themselves into 
another. In nature we find that all the forms of 
known crystals mathematically belong to six systems 
of denominations, and we shall probably find that 
Christian thought crystallizes in the same number 
of systems. Now, as it would be manifestly un- 

155 



156 MY SEPTUAGINT 

scientific to say that an orthorhombic crystal is no 
crystal because it is not monoclinic, so it would be 
unscientific to declare that any one system of 
theology is not Christian because its angles and 
cleavage are not the same as those of another 
statement of theology. 

About heretics. A most high-minded and con- 
scientious man might enter the ministry of a certain 
Christian denomination because he believes that 
Christian doctrine has crystallized in his mind as 
it has in the minds of a majority of that denomina- 
tion. But a crystal may be dissolved and reformed, 
and similar processes probably will be going on in 
the mind of any thinking man. If it be discov- 
ered that this new information of thought diverges 
from the original there may be something for the 
conscientious clergyman to do, and there may be 
something for his church or denomination to per- 
form. In his case, manifestly, he is morally bound 
to avoid all concealment of the change from the 
moment that he becomes conscious that a real, and 
not a suspected, change has taken place. If upon 
such examination he becomes convinced that it has 
taken place and that the change is so thorough that 



MY SEPTUAGINT 157 

it cannot rightly hold by its former name, then he 
is bound, as a gentleman, to announce in a Chris- 
tian way the change that has taken place, and 
frankly withdraw from his denomination and put 
himself into the denomination that fits his new 
crystallization of thought. And everyone ought to 
respect him for pursuing this course of conduct. 

If, for instance, a monoclinic crystal should turn 
to solution and reform as a triclinic, it ought not to 
desire any longer to be counted monoclinic, but 
be willing to take the new name which scien- 
tifically belongs to it. And no one should be 
offended. The whole thing is a question of intel- 
lectual determination and scientific classification. 
In crystallization there has been discovered the 
property of the same solution presenting two forms 
wholly independent. This is called dimorphism. 
An instance of this is seen in carbonate of lime, 
which usually crystallizes in the rhombohedron 
form, but sometimes in prisms, which are trimetric. 
In the one it is called calcite, in the other it is 
called aragonite, two " denominations," you see. 
The former occurs under a lower and the other 
under a higher temperature. So in a man of less 



158 MY SEPTUAGINT 

heart, less warmth of temperament, less lovingness, 
the crystallized theology has one form, while in a 
man of higher spiritual temperature it takes another 
form, but in both cases it is the same solution which 
has crystallized. 

What must the church do in tnis case ? With- 
out passion it must simply take up the question, 
" Does this man belong to us ? " If not, and he 
does not withdraw, then he must be removed from 
the shelf in the cabinet to which he does not belong. 
There should be no more passion about this than a 
scientific man would have who had arranged his 
crystals in six different cabinets, and finding an 
isometric crystal had somehow got into the tetrago- 
nal cabinet, removes it to its own place. But just 
as certain as scientific confusion would come where 
this were not done, so theological confusion will 
come when a man remains, or is allowed to remain, 
in a denomination to which he does not belong. 

The cry of " heresy hunting," which sometimes 
is raised by newspapers, that live on sensation, is 
absurd. You cannot hunt a heretic in this country 
and in this day when the highest developments of 
Christian thought and spiritual experience can be 



MY SEPTUAGINT 159 

found among Roman Catholics and Protestants, 
among Unitarians, Presbyterians, Universalists, 
Methodists, Independents and every other denomi- 
nation. The papers generally side with the man 
who is assumed to be in divergence. Let us be 
charitable, and suppose that our journalists are ani- 
mated by the chivalric feeling of standing up for 
what seems to be the smaller, if not the feebler, 
party. But clergymen make a great mistake when 
they parade their divergence and defiantly challenge 
the denominations to which they have belonged, 
and are still supposed to belong, and thus purchase 
a little cheap, short-lived notoriety. 

On the other hand, when a man inside a church 
propounds and publishes what seems to be some- 
thing contradictory to the standards it behooves his 
denomination very patiently, very charitably, very 
devoutly, to examine the case. On examination 
one of two things may be discovered. The man's 
divergence from the standard of his church may 
not seem so great as it appeared at first, or may 
not be vital, or it may be discovered that he was 
right and the standards were wrong. It will not 
do to assume that the standards are infallible and 



160 MY SEPTUAGINT 

fixed. A man of the nineteenth century, having 
the age and ability of Augustine, ought to know 
more of the meaning of the Scripture than the 
great Saint did when he wrote " The City of God," 
for the nineteenth century man has the advantage 
of having much longer spiritual experience of the 
church, as well as all the scholarship accumulated 
through the intervening centuries, to assist him in 
the study of what he believes to be God's word. 

Theology is always as much a progressive science 
as geology. If one thousand of the wisest, purest, 
most intellectual, most healthy scholars in Christen- 
dom were to formulate a creed out of the New 
Testament Scriptures, as they are known to-day, 
that theologic statement could not remain the same 
to the date of A.D. 2891. The power, the 
thought, the study of a thousand years would 
throw it into new forms of expression, while the 
substance would remain the same. 

Let individual clergymen, and the church, and 
the press remember these things, and we shall have 
less eccentricity in the pulpit, less unseemly heat in 
ecclesiastical councils, and less nonsense in the press 
about religious and churchly matters. 



XVII. 
MISCONCEPTIONS OF EELIGION. 

Misconceptions as to the office of religion are 
revealed by unstudied expressions in man's conver- 
sation about spiritual things. 

Last night a gifted and zealous Christian man 
was talking with his friend ; who is a very worldly 
man, on the necessity of being a Christian, when 
he was met with the question, " Colonel, do you 
think that a man cannot get to heaven without 
being baptized? 7 ' Of course my intelligent friend 
was greatly aroused by such an absurd question, 
which had no revelancy to the conversation. 

When this was reported to me I recalled the 
fact of the frequency with which this and similar 
impertinent questions had been propounded to me 
in the course of my long pastorate, and how they 
have revealed the spiritual misapprehensions of 



162 MY SEPTUAGINT 

thousands of people who attend church services 
with more or less regularity. It is not at all 
important to inquire into what is or what is not 
necessary for " getting to heaven." The desire to 
"get to heaven" may be a very low thing. The 
"getting to heaven" is not at all the aim which 
any high-minded man should make for himself. 
If they be not subjective in the individual heaven 
and hell are mere circumstances. Christ did not 
come into this world to keep people out of hell, or 
to get people into heaven, because there is some- 
thing better than heaven and there is something 
worse than hell, "For God so loved the world, 
that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoso- 
ever believeth in Him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life." The worst disaster which can 
befall any man is to have his manhood perish. 
The highest attainment possible for any man is 
to have eternal life. The loftiest aim a man can 
set for himself is to be made "meet to be a partaker 
of the inheritance of the saints in light." If he be 
that, he can coolly walk through all the hot wards 
of any Dantean hell. If he be not that, all the 
rivers of life, all the gardens of paradise, all the 



MY SEPTUAGINT 163 

thrones and splendors of heaven, can make no 
happiness for him, because he will be a damned 
spirit anywhere. 

If men would but set that Scriptural ideal before 
their eyes and let it hold their hearts, and lift 
their lives, such questions as the one proposed to 
my friend would never be asked. Men would not 
inquire whether it be necessary to belong to this 
church or to that, or to any church, to be conducted 
into ecclesiastical fellowships by this ceremonial or 
by that ; but everything would be valued in pro- 
portion to its power to make man fit for the loftiest 
association of eternity. It is better to be a kingly 
peasant than an enthroned fool or a sceptred scoun- 
drel. The secular rule is that "circumstances alter 
cases." The spiritual rule, that " cases alter cir- 
cumstances," when by "cases" we understand 
characters. The whole preaching of Christ bore 
on character. What he is, not where he is, is the 
most important question that can be asked in 
regard to any man. 



XVIII. 
CHKISTMAS AND CIVILIZATION. 

So far as we have any historic information upon 
the subject, and any present phenomena to guide 
us, we may conclude that in a savage state men 
naturally live apart. It would seem that whatever 
brings men together civilizes, and whatever civilizes 
brings men together. In savage life every man 
expects every other man to do him all the evil he 
can. "The farther apart the better," is the motto 
of uncivilized life. It is not important to inquire 
whether the contiguity produced the civilization: 
it is enough for us to know that the two things 
always go together. Without frequent intercourse 
and co-operation there can be no progress among 
men. If each man does for himself only what he 
himself can do, his achievement must be small^ and 

164 



MY SEPTUAOINT 165 

still smaller the heritage the man will leave to his 
own offspring. 

Civilization means personal and general culture, 
the refinement which eliminates all traces of sav- 
agery, the achievement which comes by the arts of 
peace rather than the conquest which is the fruit of 
w T ar. It is produced by what each one can give to 
every one. It is retarded by every attempt to use 
force over the will of another, by every act of per- 
sonal violence. All wars between nations measure 
the distance of the individual and of the nationality 
from perfect civilization. If mankind ever reach 
that condition, there will be no gun shot on the face 
of the earth and not a military title worn among 
men. One will then travel everywhere and stop 
anywhere and be as perfectly safe in one place as 
in another, without lock or bolt or deadly weapon. 
As a man loses fear of his fellow-man the two come 
nearer. As two men near each other each must 
mitigate his savagery and expect the other to do the 
same. The very word "civilization" points to men 
living together in cities. A communion implies an 
interchange of gifts. Whatever promotes this near- 
ness, this kindness, this co-operation, advances civil- 



166 MY SEPTVAGINT 

ization. Whoever makes one man think better of 
all men, or all men think better of any man, in 
that proportion promotes civilization. 

The observance of Christmas plainly does this. 
Christmas keeps alive the memory of the birthday 
of a man who has been dead eighteen centuries. 
The fact of any such observance among men is itself 
worth noting. Why should any portion of the 
human race remind itself that on a certain day a 
certain man Avas born? Why should it take pains 
to perpetuate the observance of that particular day? 
Does not each individual engaged in such a celebra- 
tion wish to give himself the gratification of remem- 
bering that that man had been his benefactor, and 
to assist every other person who was benefited by 
that man's life to keep in remembrance the good 
he had received by marking the day when the great 
benefactor had been born? A birthday which was 
the beginning of a life spent in service to any com- 
munity, appeals to the communal sense of justice to 
keep it alive in the memory of men. 

The reflex action of such observance must be im- 
proving to the character of him who marks it. 
The extent and sincerity and enthusiasm of the eel- 



MY SEPTUAGINT 167 

ebration of any man's birthday marks the greatness 
and the goodness of the man and the people's 
estimate of the benefit of his career. 

Civilization finds its possibility in the funda- 
mental and universal law that nothing exists for 
itself, but each thing exists for something else, if 
not for everything else. If a number of men were 
living on an island in grossest savagery, each such 
man would do nothing for the benefit of another if 
he could possibly avoid it. The first gleam of civ- 
ilization would come to that man who by any acci- 
dent found himself the benefactor of any other man, 
and found pleasure therein. This would be in- 
creased if the man benefited should feel the slightest 
sensation of gratitude, and if, also, the least impulse 
came of that pleasurable sensation to repeat the be- 
neficence to another. It might begin even further 
back than that — namely, in a voluntary abstenta- 
tion on the part of any one man from doing injury 
to another. As these men grew to be less and less 
afraid to live nearer and nearer to one another there 
would come to them such a sense of the advantage 
of this new state of things that they would more 
and more desire to improve it. Thus society would 



168 MY SEPTUAGINT 

come about, and as society sent its blessing on the 
individual in return for his contribution to its pro- 
gress, there would be the beginning of an ideal civ- 
ilization. 

Far as we are from the reality, have we not com- 
pleted this ideal? If so, how does it stand in the 
minds of those who are most nearly civilized to- 
day? In other words, what do our hearts hope 
and our minds prophesy as to the condition of 
men, women and children, when all humanity 
shall be perfectly civilized? Is it not something 
like this: 

First, whatever be the state of society it will 
probably be no more like that which is in America 
and England to-day than like that which was in 
Palestine in the days of Jesus. The environment 
of the perfectly civilized man will be totally differ- 
ent from that of the great Prophet of the New Tes- 
tament. So, in much of His external life, will the 
life of the perfectly civilized man be different from 
the life of Jesus. But the ideal of men of all races 
and of all religions in all past ages and in the pres- 
ent, so far as we can learn from their literatures, is 
that the perfectly civilized man will be a man hav- 



MY SEPTUAGINT 169 

ing the spirit and obeying the teaching of Jesus of 
Nazareth. He is the only man shown us in all 
literature who was perfectly civilized — who was, as 
one of the old English dramatists called Him, "the 
first true gentleman that ever lived. " The observ- 
ance of Christmas has increasingly directed the 
minds of men, of women and of children, to that 
one consummate flower of manhood. 

In the next place, in a perfectly civilized com- 
munity the ideal mother will be as pure in her 
motherhood as she ever was in her virginity. 
Motherhood will be something far above the mere 
bringing of offspring into the world. Motherhood 
will be neither sought nor shunned, but every 
mother will receive her child as if let down from 
heaven into her arms. Each woman's body will 
be reverenced as that temple of God's Holy Spirit 
from which the little Messiahs of God do come. 
Our observance of Christmas repeats the picture of 
such w T omanhood to the eyes of millions of people 
of all ages and conditions so as to give an impulse 
to our whole humanity toward the goal of perfect 
civilization. 

In the next place, ideal civilization has intense 



170 MY SEPTVAGINT 

and reverent regard for childhood. The birth of 
each babe will be an event of profoundest interest 
to heaven and earth. Wherever the child is born 
all the race of man on earth, shepherds and wise 
men, neighboring peasants and foreign kings, will 
somehow be connected with the event. And the 
birth of each unsought and unshunned child will 
draw the attention of the spiritual world to itself. 
The creation of no conceivable sun or planet could 
be so important and so interesting to God and man, 
to heaven and earth, as the birth of any human 
baby in an age and in a land of the perfectly civil- 
ized. 

Now, between this ideal and any low condition 
in which men have ever been known, the whole 
length of possible progress lies. 

Nothing now known among men contributes so 
much to the possibility of the realization of these 
ideals as the observance of Christmas. Whatever 
mistakes, superstitions, and vulgarities creep into 
this observance, it still points to the ultimate human 
goal of humanity. It still increases the aspiration 
of humanity, and it can point to the progress of the 
civilization which in eighteen centuries has been 



MY SEPTUAGINT 171 

produced by the personality, the thought, and the 
work of that Jesus Christ whose birth it commemo- 
rates, to all that measures the difference between 
that first Christmas and the Christmas of 1891, as 
indicative of its own measureless value. 



XIX. 

DISCOURSING ON THE HUMANITIES. 

"Did you have a good time at your luncheon 
party?" I asked of Mrs. Judge S , yesterday. 

"Oh yes/' said she, "we had a pretty good time." 

"What did you talk about?" said I. 

"Oh," said she, "nothing much; just chatter 
and clatter, and talk about little feminine things." 

"And you call that nothing, do you?" said I. 

Then, after this brief conversation, I meditated 
on that "nothing." I have frequently had ladies 
describe their interviews to me as mere nugatory 
talks, trifles, worthless gabble, and all that kind of 
thing. Perhaps they are mistaken in this. Per- 
haps they erect a standard, or suppose that we men 
erect a standard, quite different from that which 
is true and real. 

Let us look at the case. Ten ladies come to- 
rn 



MY SEPTUAGINT 173 

gether into some arranged meeting for simple social 
intercourse. They do not discuss any philosophical, 
scientific, political, ecclesiastical, or theological ques- 
tion. Not one of those themes is mentioned amongst 
them. But there are a thousand questions in an 
hour asked and answered in regard to mothers and 
fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, uncles and 
aunts, cousins, children, husbands and wives, and 
household matters, no one of which is of the slight- 
est interest to Congress or to any convention or 
caucus known in any department of church or state 
operations. They seem to be little questions about 
little things, and no one of the answers could in any 
manner, so far as is visible, disturb the public se- 
curity or administer to the advancement of society. 
And do all those little questions amount to nothing? 
The Governor of the State, the Mayor of the city, 
the bishop of the diocese, even I, might not be in- 
terested in the rheumatism of any grandmother, or 
the croup of any child, or the settling of the ques- 
tion of the summer residence of any member of that 
club, and yet the result of the whole meeting may 
be in a very high degree beneficial to society. Each 
woman has increased her interest in eight or nine 



174 MY SEPTUAGINT 

other families by learning little items of their con- 
dition and movements. She has done good by 
arousing the interest of nine others in her own con- 
dition and movements. There are myriads of small 
things in the social sphere no one of which will ever 
be treated in an essay, or be alluded to in a sermon, 
or even get into a newspaper paragraph, just as there 
are myriads of vegetable particles in every forest 
which never get into the botanical treatises, but 
which help nurture the beautiful trees the painters 
depict, and the statelier trees the ship-builders 
covet. 

Do not let us despise any beneficences, however 
small. Do not let us consider small talk as no talk. 
Let us discriminate even in gossip. All gossip is 
not bad ; it is only that gossip which is acrid, ma- 
levolent and injurious that is hurtful. Perhaps 
that high preacher or lofty essayist who speaks flip- 
pantly and with contempt of women's gabble may 
not be able in any one sermon or one article to do 
as much good as a dozen dear women have done 
who have met for an hour or two and said no hate- 
ful thing of any human being, but made tender in- 
quiries of little Johnnie's frost-bitten heel, and a 



MY SEPTUAGINT 175 

pimple on little Elsie's shoulder, and the misfortune 
of a nurse having to be taken away from the family 
just when baby needed her, and the rheumatism in 
her neighbor's husband's shoulder. 

Now, as I thought upon these things, I said, 
" Mrs. S , never say that you have been talk- 
ing of little nothings ; but when you are asked what 
was the subject of conversation at the party of wo- 
men which you attended the previous day, say in 
reply, 'My dear sir, we were discoursing on the 
humanities.' " 

Mrs. S clapped her hands. "That is the 

very phrase ; I never thought of it. I will always 
use it hereafter, and every time I come home, and 
the judge asks me what we were talking about, I 
will reply, ' My dear sir, we were discoursing on the 
humanities.' " 



XX. 

"DECENT." 

The word "decent" and its opposite, "inde- 
cent/' have a classical signification. Each is 
somewhat different, it would seem, from the mod- 
ern colloquial use of these words. A few days 
since I met a friend, a distinguished man, with 
whom I am upon some terms of familiarity, and 
when I saluted him with " you look indecently 
well for a man doing so much work," he gave me 
a quick little glance, which caused me to add : " I 
used the word indecently in its classic sense." 

The word " decently " occurs but once in the 
Holy Scripture (1 Cor. 14 : 40), in which is given 
the exhortation, " Let all things be done decently." 
It is interesting to compare the Greek of the origi- 
nal with the English of King James' version. In 
the former the word takes on a high meaning, 

176 



MY SEPTUAGINT 111 

implying something of grace and beauty. Perhaps 
when we get down to the root of the thought we 
shall find even there some of the sap which flowers 
out into beauty and grace. The Greek word is 
translated by an English word derived from 
the Latin root, which the translators must have 
supposed to be synonymous. Throughout the 
classical writings the word seems to be used to 
signify fitness and pleasingness. Going a little 
lower shall we not find in our minds that these 
two ideas, while different, are so related, that what- 
ever really is " fit " is " pleasing." There seems 
to be a demand in the human spirit that things 
shall fit. Now what does the Avord mean ? Our 
English " fit " seems to come from " feat," and to 
be equivalent to the French " fait." It is some- 
thing done, something accomplished. Nothing was 
called a "feat" which was not finished. Ancient 
English ballads were divided into " fitts " as each 
portion was done. By " fits and starts," as an old 
phrase runs, implied that after something is fin- 
ished something else is begun. So in our modern 
scientific phrase, " the survival of the fittest," sim- 
ply means the survival of the completest. 



178 MY SEPTUAGINT 

Now then, " a decent thing " must be a thing 
which gives pleasure because it gives a sense of 
completeness. It is that in which nothing can be 
altered without injury. 

Let us apply these thoughts to practical life. 
We know that decency has been demanded in all 
ages among all people, barbarous as well as civil- 
ized, the rude as well as the polished, and it has 
always been noticed that " decency " does not have 
its chief value in itself but in its relation to some- 
thing else. An old English writer makes this 
translation of a portion of Horace's "Art of 
Poetry : " 

" Of sortes and ages thou must note the manner and the 

guyse ; 
A decensie for stirring youth, for elder folke likewise." 

It will be very easy to see that if there were 
proper ideas of decency many fashions in dress 
would instantly disappear. Fashion is not to be 
scouted. Perhaps none has ever appeared among 
women which had not a proper origin. The trouble 
with fashion is that it is so tyrannical as often to 
destroy fitness. For instance, a blonde woman of 
known taste, who devotes the energies of her life 



MY SEPTUAGINT 179 

to studying the propriety of dress, and who is the 
Queen of Fashion, because she does not stop one 
moment to consider what other people think, but 
simply strives to find out what will fit her heighth 
and complexion, her age, and the color of the room 
and the nature of the light in which she is to be 
seen, always seems decent. A sister of hers, who is 
two inches taller and six inches broader, and who 
is a brunette, copies the exact cut and color of her 
sister's apparel. The Avoman next further removed 
from her in society adopts the same kind of dress, 
without regard to any connections, and so it spreads 
until the hairdressers, the chambermaids and the 
cooks, long and short, stout and slender, blonde 
and brunette, all appear in the same fashion. 

In a few cases that fashion is decent, but in 
most cases are not men and women indecently 
dressed ? Each man, even in his dress, should pay 
only this much regard to the apparel of his fellow 
man, namely : that he shall not seem to make him- 
self conspicuous by the arbitrary selection of gar- 
ments for the purpose of making himself conspic- 
uous and nothing more. The prevailing thought 
should be that which fits him ; that is to say, his 



180 MY SEPTUAGINT 

dress shall not suggest to the beholder the sense 
that anything is wanting or anything over done. 

It must be noted that all behavior, to be decent, 
must change with changing circumstances. It 
would be indecent for a judge to conduct himself 
during the trial of a capital case as he would when 
playing with his children in the nursery, or super- 
intending the affairs of his stable. One of the 
greatest arts of happy and handsome living is to be 
able to adapt one's self immediately to the demands 
of the changed condition, and this reminds us that 
our English word "fit" has sometimes been de- 
rived from a Dutch word signifying " swift " or 
" quick." If a man be too slow in passing from 
one condition of behavior to another, in both of 
which he shall be decent, that is to say, fitting, it 
is very clear that there may be an unfit and there- 
fore indecent interval, so that a man may pass 
from one "decent" to another " decent" by a 
bridge that is indecent. This is to be avoided. 

It follows that cast iron manners will sometimes 
be decent and sometimes indecent, according to 
their connections. A great man was playing with 
his little children, one astride of him and another 



MY SEPTTJAGINT 181 

driving him, while he was on all fours. At the 
moment a prominent official was announced, he 
immediately put the children aside, saying : " We 
must change this : here comes a fool." He simply 
meant that there was a person approaching who 
believes that a man in high position, and exercis- 
ing great power, should always be behaving as he 
would in his most conspicuous publicity at the 
moment of a great state affair. 

Very many mistakes in the judgment arise from 
this canon. I once had a friend, a bishop, who 
had a genial heart, but whose manners were such 
that I told him, when we were alone, that he 
expended as much dignity in picking up a pin 
from the floor as would suffice to ordain twenty 
priests. 

Another difficulty about maintaining decency is 
the ease with which we make mistakes as to relations. 
It is possible to conceive of circumstances as being 
gay and conform our behavior thereto, when in 
point of fact the circumstances are grave. It re- 
quires no little discernment to be always able to be 
accurate in this department of thought and action. 

In the American Declaration of Independence 



182 MY SEPTUAOINT 

mention is made of " a decent respect to the opin- 
ions of mankind." Now, if a number of persons 
should be set down to answer the question as to 
what this is, a great variety of answers might be 
expected; but certainly the phrase intimates that 
there must be some regard to the opinions of man- 
kind, and that there may be an indecent regard. 
The framers of " The Declaration " simply wished 
to know that respect which was not too much, not 
too little, but just complete ; that is to say, just fit. 
We are all conscious, not only of the possibility, 
but also of the liability of falling into the indecency 
of too much or the indecency of too little. 

I am not sure but that our word " decent " runs 
back through the Latin into the Greek, and finds 
its root in a word which means that which is bind- 
ing upon one, that which he ought to do, that which 
is needed to be done. If this conjecture be cor- 
rect, the word to which I allude has its root in the 
Greek word which means God. And so we come 
to perceive strong connection between "decency" 
and " godliness." It is impossible to conceive of 
God in the abstract, or of that concrete God, Jesus 
Christ, doing anything indecent, that is to say, 



MY SEPTUAGINT 183 

unbecoming His nature or His relations to the 
universe and to the history of His august connec- 
tions with the universe, which means, that under 
any circumstances toward any being He could do 
anything that was either too great or too little for 
one who is God to do. 

If, then, that is decent which is exactly and pre- 
cisely, without the slightest excess or defect, the 
very thing which should be done by the doer, amid 
all the circumstances and under all the conditions 
of the case, then the highest possible epithet of 
praise which can be bestowed upon any action of 
either God or man is that it is — "decent." 



XXI. 
"A HARD, HARD WORLD." 

The other day I read the following paragraph 
in one of the brightest journals published in Amer- 
ica, with caption as above: 

" The most pitiful sentence I have read in a newspaper in 
a long time was that brief line in one of the New York dail- 
ies the other morning in connection with an author of good 
parts whom bad luck had driven to suicide, " He had no 
friends." The reporter who wrote the article was merely 
filling in the perfunctory details of a police record, and had 
already given the name, nativity, sex, age, occupation and 
dwelling place of the unfortunate. 

Usually these descriptions end with the statement that ' a 
brother took charge of the remains/ or ' the coroner deliv- 
ered the body to the friends of the deceased/ or ' the. lodge 
of which the deceased was a member will conduct the fu- 
neral.' But this man, borne down to despair and death in the 
midst of a teeming city where he had lived and labored for 
twenty years, ' had no friends.' Ah, this world, which looks 
so small when we measure its girth with a telegraph cable, 
how infinitely huge it seems sometimes when we try to span 
the distance on its surface between man and man ! " 

Is the tone of this article quite healthy? Is its 

184 



MY SEPTUAQINT 185 

view of the matter quite correct? Which party is 
to be blamed in this case, the world, or the dead 
man? One does not wish even to think unkindly 
of the departed, but still one wants to keep an in- 
tellectual poise. Let us look at the case as given. 
Here was a man, a man of good parts, an author, 
who had committed suicide. It is held that he 
was-compelled to commit that crime by "■ bad luck," 
and the statement is added, "he had no friends." 
Complaint is now made that there was no more 
said by the reporter in the newspaper. Well, what 
more was there to be said? There is no such 
thing as luck, good or bad, to "drive" any man to 
anything. But here was a man, an author, a per- 
son of good parts, who dies in a great city without 
friends. Who is to blame for that? Every hu- 
man being upon the face of the earth can have 
friends if he will have friends, but if he throw off 
the friendship of the world, if he repel his fellow 
man through life, or if he do absolutely nothing 
for the world, what right has he to look to the 
world to do something for him? But whoever 
this man was — I am sure I do not know — the 
world has done very much for him. Every man 



186 MY SEPTUAQINT 

that comes into existence finds houses, roads, cleared 
land, woodland, and a population that had been on 
the premises for years and years before himself; 
consequently he is born under an immense debt to 
the world. He may choose to live without per- 
forming a single kind act, without exercising his 
intellect to give the least assistance to the progress 
of humanity, and he may expect to be carried 
through the whole march by his comrades. Now 
shall the army in which he is enrolled as much 
as any of the others be blamed if at last when 
his comrades have tried for years to hold him up 
they let the heavy weight fall by the wayside? 

Suppose all the world were like this suicide. 
Would it not be a very much worse world? I 
think I have the right to assume that no man can 
lead a life of kindly deeds and devotion to the ma- 
terial, the mental, and the spiritual progress of his 
race without having friends. We have very high 
authority for the assertion, "he that would have 
friends must show himself friendly." There is no 
position in society however low, there is no situa- 
tion however straitened, in which any human being 
touches other human beings without having an op- 



MY SEPTUAGINT 187 

portunity to be kind; and it is impossible to be 
kind without producing some reciprocal kindness. 
The world is not as hard as this case would seem 
to make it, and almost all that is hard in the world 
comes from just such people as lead just such lives 
as are closed by suicide. 

Having now been three score years and ten in 
human society, having lived at home and in for- 
eign lands, been rich and poor, been in war and in 
peace, in negro cabins and Egyptian huts, I have 
found that the world metes out to a man very much 
what a man metes out to the world, and that it 
loves to be kind. 

Dear old world, as at this Christmas tide I have 
said something kind of thee, I should not wonder 
if thou say something kind of me, when I have 
left thee. I shall not hear it, perhaps, but 
wherever I go I shall have something good to say of 
thee. I am very glad, at least, that I have had so 
many Christmases with thee ! 



XXII. 

CHRISTIAN COMMUNISM. 

There seems to have been a great mistake as 
to the character and spirit of the early Christian 
communism. This mistake has not been confined 
to vulgar minds ; it has been shared by men of 
exalted genius. The case is thus stated in the 
Acts of the Apostles : " All that believed were to- 
gether, and had all things common ; and they sold 
their possessions and goods, and parted them to all 
according as any man had need" (Chap. ii., 44, 
45). " And the multitude of them that believed, 
were of one heart and soul ; and not one of them 
said that aught of the things which he possessed 
was his own ; but they had all things common." 
Upon this, so acute a man as the eloquent Bossuet 
remarks : " It is the divine will that there should 
be equality among men ; that is to say, that none 
should want, but that all should have what they 
need, and that there should be compensation for 
inequality. When shall we say with our whole 

188 



MY SEPTUAGINT 189 

heart to our suffering brother, ' All that is mine is 
thine/ and to our more wealthy brother, 'All that 
is thine is mine ? 9 " In the same paragraph he 
says : " Let charity equalize all, according to St. 
Paul, who says that all should be equal." 

The eloquent bishop fails to refer us to any pass- 
age in the writings of the apostle where he makes 
any such statement, and he fails to recall the pass- 
age in which St. Paul said, " If any would not 
work, neither should he eat." 

The record in Holy Scriptures shows the follow- 
ing state of affairs : (1) The community had none 
in it who were not Christians. (2) There was no 
denial of their right to hold property ; property 
was not considered robbery. (3) Each had an un- 
questioned right to retain his property, to sell his 
property, to retain the proceeds or contribute them 
as he chose. (4) While no one was compelled to 
put his property into the common stock, it was 
done out of charity and by no communistic law. 

Nowhere in the New Testament is there an 
encouragement to any man to say to his wealthier 
brother, "All thine is mine." That is the lan- 
guage of the communism of diabolism. " To say to 



190 MY SEPTUAGINT 

our suffering brother, " All mine is thine/' is the 
language of Christian communism. The inequali- 
ties are to be met not by the violent claims of the 
poor, but by the spontaneous charity of the rich. 
Christian communism does not find its possibilities 
in the wants of some, but in the love of others. 
It can never be brought about by the snatching of 
the needy, but by the generosity of the wealthy. 
The former is the devil's method ; the latter is 
Christ's. The devil's instrument is dynamite ; 
Christ's instrument is charity. The devil has 
always been a liar and a failure j Christ has always 
been the truth and a success. 

The two classes who stand most in the way of 
the adjustment of the difficulties of social life are 
those who shout at the wealthier brother, "All 
thine is mine," and those who fail to say to the 
poorer brother, " All mine is thine." Let not the 
latter class forget that they are just as guilty as the 
former. The two most injurious, perhaps equally 
injurious, classes in the community, are the ungen- 
erous rich and the greedy poor. The strength and 
beauty of society are the considerate, charitable 
rich and the contented, industrious poor. 



XXIII. 
IN A COUKT-HOUSE. 

It is an old legal maxim that every man is to 
be presumed to be innocent until proved to be 
guilty. That seems to be accordant with common 
sense. How could there be society without it? 
In our courts criminal proceedings are had to estab- 
lish allegations against some one who is charged 
with what, if true, would make him guilty. No 
process whatever is needed to establish any man's 
innocence. That stands as if it had been estab- 
lished by every court in the land. But when an 
allegation is made it must be proved by sufficient 
testimony to destroy all reasonable belief in the 
accused person's innocency. Until that is accom- 
plished no man must give credence to the allega- 
tion but hold the accused as innocent as if nothing 
had been even surmised against him. 

Now how far is this true in point of fact ? Is 
it not rather true that when an accusation is made 

191 



192 MY SEPTUAGINT 

against a man, whatever may have been his previ- 
ous character, he is immediately considered bound 
to bring evidence to show that he was not guilty? 
Even if the prosecution fail to convict and the 
defendant go clear, unless sufficient evidence be 
brought to convince the indifferent and uninterested 
hearer, he will still regard the accused as guilty, 
and go to his grave holding the two words as 
synonymous and the two ideas as equivalent. 

This has been brought to me very forcibly by 
an attendance upon a court in which for three 
days an attempt was made to impanel a jury. 
Several hundreds of jurors were called, and scores 
of them testified that they were so affected by 
prejudice that no amount or kind of evidence could 
be brought to remove that prejudice. That is to 
say, before a single particle of evidence had been 
adduced, a very large proportion of the population 
had made up their minds on the guilt or innocence 
of the accused just as those minds should have 
been determined by the examination of all the evi- 
dence that was to be produced but which had not 
been produced on the trial, because the trial really 
could not begin before the jury was impaneled. 



MY SEPTVAGINT 193 

A citizen sitting as juror, if he hear testimony 
on behalf of the prosecution which does not con- 
vince him beyond reasonable doubt of the guilt of 
the accused, must find the defendant " not guilty/' 
even if he produce not a particle of evidence of his 
innocence. And yet nine out of ten of the men 
examined answered what amounted to this : that 
when any kind or amount of evidence had been 
brought by the prosecution, although it were 
utterly worthless, it devolved on the defendant to 
establish his innocence beyond question ! " He 
must prove his innocence/' said dozens of men 
under examination. 

The melancholy result of this view of facts is to 
create the impression that the tendency is to think 
evil rather than to believe good of our kind. It 
seems to be the same in every department of life. 
A great majority of people are disposed rather to 
anticipate evil than good. In other words, into 
our blood has come a strain of pessimism. Will 
anything mend matters until there comes a change 
by a strong infusion of the happy optimism of 
our blessed religion? 



XXIV. 

ADDRESS OF WELCOME TO THE 

YOUNG PEOPLE'S SOCIETY OF 

CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 

[Delivered in Madison Square Garden, New York, at the 
opening of the Eleventh Annual Convention, July 7, 1892.] 

Fellow Ekdeavorers, to me has fallen the 
honor and the pleasure of welcoming, on behalf of 
the pastors of New York, to the greatest city in the 
youngest nationality, the largest body of organized 
Christian workers in the world. Without affecta- 
tion or pretence I can understand why this honor- 
able and pleasing duty should have been assigned to 
me. I am almost the patriarch of the pastorate in 
New York, a very few of my brethren having been 
pastor of one church-flock so long as I have. I am 
presumed, therefore, to know my colleagues. On 
the other hand, in the very beginning I heard the 

194 



M Y SEPTUAGINT 195 

chirp of this young eaglet in its "down East" 
nest, and have watched and nursed and cheered it, 
until I have lived to see its wings spread wide and 
its pinions in perpetual flutter as it soars high in 
mid ether, and turns its unblinking eyes at the sun 
of righteousness. Then perhaps I am the very 
person who should present the welcome of one of 
these parties to the other. Of my brethren of the 
pastorate of New York, I can speak the best 
things. Very certainly there is not one of them 
who, in my opinion, is faithless to the trusts con- 
fided in his hands by the great head of the church. 
As a body the clergy of New York are learned, 
faithful, courageous, devoted ministers of the gos- 
pel of the blessed God. Amongst them there is 
great independence of thinking, and they have re- 
peated divergence of opinion, but they feel that 
they are set for the protection and propagation of 
our most holy faith ; and I do not know a man 
amongst us who would deliberately hurt any hu- 
man being or maliciously oppose anything which 
he could be made to see had power in it to increase 
the sway of Jesus over the hearts of man. In the 
name of my beloved colleagues I extend to all rep- 



196 MY SEPTUAGINT 

resentatives of the Y. P. S. C. E. a welcome to 
New York, our New York and yours ; a welcome 
to our churches, our churches and yours; a wel- 
come «to our homes, our homes and yours. As 
we have prayed for you while you were coming, 
so now we pray that your sojourn in this city 
may be comfortable and edifying to you, and 
an immense benediction to us and to our congre- 
gations. 

As I have spoken my deliberate opinion of the 
pastors of New York, so I may express my opin- 
ion of the institution represented by this magnifi- 
cent assemblage. From the beginning of its ex- 
istence it has engaged my attention very closely. 
I have watched its growth not with the fear of sus- 
picion, but with the trepidation of tender love. I 
have been afraid that grievous mistakes might be 
made by even the good men who have been en- 
gaged in its upbuilding. The very rapidity of its 
growth has sometimes made me afraid, but to-day 
I am permitted to give you a welcome with the 
most unqualified heartiness because I can truly say 
that there is no management in America which 
seems to me to be less open to adverse criticism 



MY SEPTUAGINT 197 

than the management of the Y. P. S. C. E. I 
know how much this is for me to say; and 
before you and the Great Captain of our sal- 
vation, I do say it most deliberately and most 
cordially. 

That the institution was needed seems to be in- 
dicated by the concurrence in its support of so 
many representative Christian men divergent in 
theology and in ecclesiastical views. That it has 
had the blessing of God and the good will of men, 
and that it has supplied what has been called a 
" felt want/' has been demonstrated by the rapidity 
of the extension of its operations, the very recital 
of which almost takes away one's breath. Eleven 
years ago there was one society, ten years ago 
there were 2, nine years ago there were 56, five 
years ago there were 2314, to-day more than 
22,000 societies are reported in the city of New 
York at the eleventh annual convention. Nine 
years ago I remember that there were 2870 mem- 
bers in the 56 societies; five years ago there were 
140,000 members in the 2314 societies; one year 
ago it was announced in Minneapolis that there 
were 1,000,000 members, and to that number 



198 MY SEPTUAQINT 

500,000 have been added during the past year. 
Has there ever been a growth like that since the 
day the Lord Jesus Christ ascended up on high 
and led captivity captive, and gave good gifts to 
men? 

In welcoming you would it be amiss to invite 
you to a brief study of the causes of this phenom- 
enal growth? 

First of all, I do not find it in the form of the 
organization but in the spirit of this society, which 
more than any other found on earth in this 19th 
century, reminds one of Christ's Christianity. 
The society does not depend for its existence and 
growth, as many ecclesiastical systems do, upon the 
strength and compactness of its organization, but as 
most growing things do, upon the internal life of 
its individual members. No one can continue a 
member of the Y. P. S. C. E. who is not seeking 
to have the spirit of Christ. He may belong for 
years to a lodge or even a church, and have no 
more the spirit of Christ than any outsider. He 
may belong to any one of those organizations and 
never lift a finger nor wink an eye to bring him- 
self or others to a higher life; but the very motive 



MY SEPTUAG1NT 199 

for joining one of our societies is to do that very 
thing. Its very operation continually keeps a man 
up to the activities of real Christian living or 
grinds him out of the society. 

The binding and stimulating element in Y. P. S. 
C. E. is the pledge taken by each active member. 
That pledge is worth your closest study. If it 
were not inspired by the Holy Ghost it is one of 
the most remarkable of the uninspired productions 
of the human intellect. It is thoroughly spiritual. 
It is thoroughly loyal to the local church to which 
the member of the society belongs, and thor- 
oughly loyal to God's Christ. It combines faith 
and works just as the holy Scriptures do. It is 
after the model of the Psalmist: "Trust in the 
Lord and do good." It is after the model of the 
Apostle: "Show me thy faith by thy works" It 
teaches that a Christian life is one that works 
from the inner man to the outer; and this is what 
distinguishes Christianity from all the other ethical 
cults in the world. It furnishes a constant spring 
of motion, not from a man's regard for the good 
opinon of his fellow men, but from his loyalty to 
his Divine Master. It is a manly pledge because 



200 MY SEPTUAGINT 

given to God alone, and avoiding all impracticable 
details. 

To show that these things are so, let us read its 
opening: "Trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ for 
strength, I promise Him that I will strive to do 
whatever He would like to. have me do ; that I 
will make it the rule of my life to pray and to read 
the Bible every day; and to support my own 
church in every way, especially by attending all 
her regular Sunday and mid-week services, unless 
prevented by some reason which I can conscien- 
tiously give to my Saviour; and that, just so far 
as I know how, throughout my whole life, I will 
endeavor to lead a Christian life." It will be per- 
ceived that there is nothing in this pledge for 
which a member can be called to account except 
by the Judge of all earth. It will be seen that 
there is the promise only of an endeavor which can 
be kept by the weakest member, whatever failure 
may occur in his practical life. The member does 
not promise to pray and read the Bible every day; 
he simply promises to make it the rule of his life to 
do this. For all failures he holds himself account- 
able only unto God, not to any human society. 



MY SEPTUAGINT 201 

Now it is manifest that the manliest man in all 
America can sign that part of the pledge, and be- 
come the better by the signing. 

The second part of the pledge is that which has 
made the Endeavor Society a gymnasium of Chris- 
tian activity. The active member promises to be 
at every prayer meeting of his society, and by 
speech or prayer or reading, there, amongst his 
brethren, of about the same age, all belonging to 
his own local church, to add something to the in- 
terest of the meeting. It is because of the general 
fidelity with which this pledge has been kept that 
the evangelical churches in America have during 
the past ten years become more interesting, more 
instructive, more profitable to the community than 
during the fifty years which immediately preceded. 
To-day, more than ever before, Jesus Christ can 
look down upon the American churches and say, 
"Ye are my witnesses." 

My dear brethren, it is to our loyalty to our 
local church — not merely to our denomination — 
that the Christian Endeavor movement largely 
owes its success. There have been other young 
people's societies inside the church and outside the 



202 MY SEPTUAG1NT 

church, but those inside have ordinarily distracted 
the congregation, and those outside have drawn 
away the members and weakened the church. I 
am an old pastor, and I declare to you on my 
honor that if I were this day pastor of any church 
in which the authorities, without my concurrence, 
would persist allowing any other young people's 
society than the Y. P. S. C. E., I should instan- 
taneously resign. It is because its members recog- 
nize the Christian Endeavor Society to be only a 
means and not at all an end, not existiug to build 
up itself, but existing simply to build up the church 
of which it is a part, that this youngest Christian 
movement hasjiad such wonderful growth. 

Associate members are admitted to this society, 
but that is simply another name for inviting candi- 
dates for church membership. Let any student of 
ecclesiastical history see if he can discover any 
organization which has ever added to the churches 
of America 82,500 members in one year. He will 
find that the Y. P. S. C. E. did that in 1890, and 
did it from its associate members, in addition to its 
influence in bringing in others who were outside 
both Church and Society. 



MY SEPTUAGINT 203 

If the Y. P. S. C. E. grow proportionately as it 
has since 1871, the close of this century will find 
8,000,000 of names upon its roll. Now there 
might be 8,000,000 of names on any roll which 
might stand for only the figure 8 and six ciphers, 
but let us remember that on the rolls of the Y. P. 
S. C. E. it stands for 8,000,000 of real things, and 
that each one of those real things is human, and 
that each of those human beings is young; and 
that each one of those young persons loves the Lord 
Jesus Christ, the Captain of his salvation, with a 
passion, and that those Christian young persons are 
at work, and that they are engaged in constant con- 
servative and aggressive work for real vital Christ- 
like Christianity, regardless of scientific theology 
and all mere human ecclesiasticism. 

What a grand prospect spreads out for the future ! 
If there be no faithlessness and no faltering, the 
man who, in any city in America, shall stand to 
welcome the convention of 1900 — may I be that 
man ! — will have behind him a retrospect of mag- 
nificent achievement, and before him an Apocalyptic 
vision as splendid as ever fell on John's anointed 
eyes on Patmos. The hope and the assurance of 



204 MY SEPTTJAGINT 

such a thing lie in the strenuous preservation of the 
active members' pledge. Drop that out and the Y. 
P. S. C. E. would soon be relegated to that church- 
closet in which are now lying the malodorous rags 
and remnants of the many defunct young peoples' 
societies that fumed and fussed and fizzled, and 
expired in all the past of our church history. Let 
it be distinctly understood, let it be proclaimed, 
let it be maintained, that any association which 
claims to be a Y. P. S. C. E. and does not have this 
identical pledge, and does not insist upon the exact 
and constant observance of the pledge, is a delusion 
and a snare to say the least, and that it lays itself 
open to the violent suspicion of being also a fraud. 
During the lifetime of our young society, the 
question of Christian union has attracted more in- 
terest than ever before since the Keformation. I do 
not attribute this interest to the existence of our 
society, although no violence would be done to 
probabilities if such a statement were made, but I 
do wish to call attention to, what I think would not 
be denied as a fact, the promotion of Christian unity 
by the increase of interdenominational intercourse 
which has been brought about by our societies. 



MY SEPTUAGINT 205 

The ecclesiastical projects have all been cold, faulty, 
pragmatical and impracticable schemes, working 
from without, and binding people together with ex- 
ternal cords. The work in this direction of the 
Y. P. S. C. E. has been more effective than all 
other things combined, because it has been sponta- 
neous, without plan or purpose, unworldly, spiritual 
and Christly. Ecclesiastical uniters would bind 
unwilling people together by their thongs, but 
Christ would draw people together by the bonds of 
a man and the cords of love. Ecclesiastical reason- 
ing endeavors to show that the way to bring about 
Christian unity would be for the members of each 
church to make some concessions, thus hurting their 
consciences, and to come together upon some com- 
mon ground which not one of them would naturally 
or graciously wish to occupy. Now the Christian 
Endeavor movement is the very reverse of this; it 
binds each one of its members to devote his force to 
building up his own local church as that course of 
conduct which will be most pleasing to the Lord 
Jesus Christ. When this work is fully started in 
several churches and the workmen begin to perceive 
that their fellow Christians in other churches are 



206 MY SEPTUAGINT 

animated by the same spirit, conferences naturally 
occur, and these conferences grow, and because all 
are governed by the same spirit, and subordinate all 
society as well as all ecclesiastical operations to the 
promotion and glory of Jesus Christ, they come to 
love one another. Now love is the natural prede- 
cessor of courtship, as courtship is the natural fore- 
runner of wedlock, and thus it has come to pass 
that more than anything else a movement designed 
to promote the glory of Christ through increased 
interest in each Christian's special church has done 
more than anything else to advance that only unity 
which is dear to the heart of Christ, not the putting 
of His people into one ecclesiastical fold, but binding 
together His people while they are preserving the 
individuality of their churches, their denominational 
personalities, just as the Father and the Son are one, 
without sacrifice of either's personality. In no other 
sense probably did Jesus Christ pray for Christian 
unity. His prayer was that the disciples whom 
He left behind Him, together with all those who 
should believe on Jesus through their word, "may 
be one;" He adds, "as Thou, Father, art in me 
and I in Thee, that they also be one in us." There 



MY SEPTUAGINT 207 

is no more indication of the desire of Jesus that we 
should lose our individuality by being united to all 
other Christian people than that the Father should 
lose His personality in that of the Son, or the Son 
His personality in that of the Father. To the ful- 
fillment of His prayer that all Christians might be 
one in the Father and in the Son, the Y. P. S. C. E. 
has contributed more than all the other movements 
of Christian people in the last five hundred years. 

In grateful memory of all the Young People's 
Society of Christian Endeavor has already done 
for our Lord Christ, and in loving anticipation of 
what it is to be doing when all of us shall have 
ascended to the Great Convention on high, in behalf 
of the pastors of the Christian Churches in the city 
of New York, I extend to you, as a body and as 
individuals, dear sisters and brothers of the Y. P. 
S. C. E., in our eleventh Convention assembled, a 
tender, warm, heartfelt welcome to our great, our 
growing, our beloved city of New York. O, leave 
blessings for our churches and our homes and take 
blessings to all your homes and churches, in the 
name of the Father and the Son and the Holy 
Ghost, Amen. 



XXV. 

THE BANNER OF JESUS. 

Written for the Eleventh Annual Convention of the Y. P. S. C. E. 

Air — Star Spangled Banner. 

See, see, Comrades ! see, floating high in the air, 
The love-woven, blood-sprinkled banner of Jesus! 

The symbol of hope, beating down all despair, 
From sin and its thralldom triumphantly frees us. 

By the hand that was pierced 

It was lifted at first, 

When the bars of the grave by our Captain were burst; 
That blood-sprinkled banner must yet be unfurled 
O'er the homes of all men and the thrones of the world. 

Shout, shout, Comrades ! shout, that our Captain and Lord, 
That standard of hope first entrusted to woman; 

And Mary, dear saint, in obeying His word, 

Flung out its wide folds over all that is human: 

So there came to embrace 

That sweet ensign of grace, 

All the true and the great, all the best of our race : 
That blood-sprinkled banner must yet be unfurled 
O'er the homes of all men and the thrones of the world. 

March, march, Comrades ! march, all the young, all the old, 
The army of Christ and of Christian Endeavor; 

With heroes our souls having now been enrolled, 
Our banner we'll follow forever and ever. 

For our march shall not cease 

'Till the Gospel of peace 

Shall our race in all lands from its tyrants release; 
That blood-sprinkled banner must yet be unfurled 
O'er the homes of all men and the thrones of the world, 
208 






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